Korean Job Discussion Forums

[agoodmouse]

I teach students at an academic high school. I've done short creative writing exercises which encourage them to stand up and tell what they've written to the class. Without looking at their papers, of course. After the speaker finishes students in the class ask questions, and I write down their student numbers for grading purposes. Do you have any short writing topic suggestions that will engage students and encourage them to write a bit so they can practice their speaking skills?

We've had a lot of success with these topics:

1. Write about an animal in the first person (e.g. I am a koala. I live in Australia and I sleep for most of the day. Great success was had with 1st grade high school students)

2. Write about the most important person in your life (e.g. students wrote about their parents, friends, and teachers -- one even wrote about Jesus)

I'm thinking of printing pictures of people and having students write a short paragraph about what that person wrote in his/her diary.

[agoodmouse]

I found this link: http://esl.about.com/library/lessons/bl_writingstorms.htm. These are some good ideas; however, some are a little vague and so may not engage students to write creatively.

1. The best thing to happen to me today

2. The worst thing to happen to me today

3. Something funny that happened to me this week

4. What I really hate!

5. What I really like!

6. My favorite thing

7. A surprise I had

8. A landscape

9. A building

10. A monument

11. A museum

12. A memory from childhood

13. My best friend

14. My boss

15. What is friendship?

16. A problem I have

17. My favorite TV show

18. My son

19. My daughter

20. My favorite grandparent

[agoodmouse]

I like the idea of asking students to write about a special power (e.g. super-hero power) he or she would want and why.

[moosehead]

My favorite topic and one that never fails is to ask them to discuss the pros and cons of whether going to school on Saturday is fair, a good idea, beneficial, etc.

Especially upon explaining (if they don't already know) this is unique to Asian cultures.

[greedy_bones]

The validity of Fan Death is also a pretty good one. I was pretty surprised when all but one of my students wrote papers arguing for Fan Death.

[dean_burrito]

Have them write about what they would do if they had a time machine. It's a great way to have them practice past, present, and future tense verbs. My students have always had fun with this one.

[agoodmouse]

[Scouse Mouse]

If your kids have reasonable comprehension skills, there is a BBC news programme called "Newsround" that is intended for young kids in the UK. Try using some of the news stories from that for ideas. You could give the kids a news item, and have them write something based on it, which they can then present.

The site is here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews

At the bottom left of the site is a link for teachers. This has some great lesson ideas, though I find many of them are too advanced and so need to be simplified.

[ddeubel]

This presentation cloze might be good for you. We have a large file of stuff for public speaking. I also posted yesterday a link to tons of topics for writing which could be worked into a presentation activity.......See a thread about writing....

http://www.mediafire.com/?fvhxmdyzugj

DD
http://eflclassroom.ning.com