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Blistering Zanazilz
Joined: 06 Jan 2018
Posts: 180
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 Posted: Mon May 21, 2018 9:05 am Post subject: ESL Writing Lessons |
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| I've just found out I will be teaching writing next term. I'll get a salary boost and I don't mind the change, but I'm fully committed this summer and won't have a whole lot of time to prepare much new material. My focus will be sentence and paragraph development, essay writing etc. I've looked for writing lessons online but most of the free stuff I've found isn't great and would require a lot of reworking on my part. I'd rather just pay a small fee for some lessons already prepared. If anyone knows of any pay (or non-pay) sites that offer decent material for download I'd appreciate it. |
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nomad soul
Joined: 31 Jan 2010
Posts: 11454
Location: The real world
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| Posted: Mon May 21, 2018 9:51 am Post subject: |
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Which country?
Who are your students (i.e., k12, university, corporate/business)?
What writing level(s) are they at?
What are the expected class sizes? |
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Blistering Zanazilz
Joined: 06 Jan 2018
Posts: 180
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| Posted: Mon May 21, 2018 11:37 am Post subject: |
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| nomad soul wrote: |
Which country?
Who are your students (i.e., k12, university, corporate/business)?
What writing level(s) are they at?
What are the expected class sizes? |
Good questions. After posting realized I forgot to add that info.
Chinese university students, writing level is about intermediate, class size between 25-35 students. |
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nimadecaomei
Joined: 22 Sep 2016
Posts: 605
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| Posted: Mon May 21, 2018 11:46 am Post subject: |
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| Blistering Zanazilz wrote: |
| nomad soul wrote: |
Which country?
Who are your students (i.e., k12, university, corporate/business)?
What writing level(s) are they at?
What are the expected class sizes? |
Good questions. After posting realized I forgot to add that info.
Chinese university students, writing level is about intermediate, class size between 25-35 students. |
I teach something similar, feel free to contact me via pm. It really takes a long time to get the notion of having a clear thesis and topic sentences that connect to it. After that focus on body paragraphs linking to the thesis and being supported. That really does take most of the semester in my experience. |
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spiral78
Joined: 05 Apr 2004
Posts: 11534
Location: On a Short Leash
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| Posted: Mon May 21, 2018 11:58 am Post subject: |
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One key concept (true in the broader picture, not focused specifically on China) is that a Chinese-language (or Russian, or Italian, or Spanish) paper in English is not an English paper. As nimade points out, the expected structure and content of the work is different.
(Practical implication: you can't produce a paper in English using Google translate;-))
I have found the work of Kaplan to be helpful for students to review on this - it's short, illustrated, and still relevant. Cal Learning's website has a pretty good 1-pager on this, if you search for Kaplan, culture and language. |
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Knedliki
Joined: 08 May 2015
Posts: 160
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Blistering Zanazilz
Joined: 06 Jan 2018
Posts: 180
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| Posted: Wed May 23, 2018 2:35 am Post subject: |
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Thanks. I've just ordered this book. And thanks for the other replies as well. |
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dragonpiwo
Joined: 04 Mar 2013
Posts: 1650
Location: Berlin
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| Posted: Wed May 23, 2018 4:08 am Post subject: erm |
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Find out what kind of writing they need to do.
Writing sentences and paragraphs is just part of the story. Any IELTS writing books would be good. |
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wildgrace
Joined: 17 Nov 2010
Posts: 55
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spiral78
Joined: 05 Apr 2004
Posts: 11534
Location: On a Short Leash
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| Posted: Wed May 23, 2018 11:37 am Post subject: |
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| I agree that 5-paragraph essays are a useful place to start, but just be sure that they know that 5-paragraph essays are not the sum total of academic paper types in English! I and my colleagues find that Chinese students coming to study in universities outside of China rely far too much on this one simple strategy for writing university level papers, and this approach leads to failure far too often. |
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