Writing improves many aspects of English such as grammar, spelling, punctuation, and sentence structure. Students can practice writing through blogging, journals, or essays. But often students don’t know where to start. An interesting topic and questions to guide their writing will really help students focus!
Our featured writing lesson on Movies does just that. With four questions to get them started, students can compose a well-organized paragraph on their favorite movie. (Don’t forget to point out the spelling difference, favourite, if you teach in a country that uses British English).
You can assign this in class or as homework. What about correction? If you mark their writing at home, it’s a great idea to use a correction key with codes to indicate spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors (check out my blog post tomorrow for a link to a key). Students can then try to correct their mistakes themselves—they really remember better this way. If you start correcting in class, I always like to circulate and help students with grammar mistakes as they’re writing. Or I note the common mistakes in a notebook as I circulate, and put them on the board to review as a class later on (without naming any names). Another idea is to have students exchange paragraphs for peer-correction.
You can easily incorporate other skills into this writing project. Put students into small groups after they’re done, and have each student read their paragraphs aloud. They can practice pronunciation while the others practice listening. Also, tell the listeners that they must come up with one related question each to encourage discussion!
Our Project Depot – Writing section features 18 guided writing projects on a variety of fun topics that are sure to motivate your students to write. For more writing tips and a fun activity, stay tuned to our blog. I blogged about the structure of a paragraph (including a sample paragraph you could hand out to your students), and Tara blogged about a fun writing activity about movies and the Oscars to do in class!
Find this lesson in the Project Depot – Writing.
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