Different ways of approaching an independent writing topic

[toeflsmeagle]

Everyone,

I found a one-page pdf on a website, which can be used for getting students to brainstorm. The handout is entitled "Thinking Strategies for Writing Competency Tests." I used this with one of my TOEFL classes, a class of four middle-school Korean boys. I had them brainstorm reasons for and against capital punishment -- the example used on the handout -- noting which of their reasons were moral reasons, which were practical reasons. I also had them elicit social and economic reasons for or against capital punishment. Then I gave them the handout, which explains these and other brainstorming approaches. Basically, it recommends multiple ways of approaching the same topic. Their assignment is to choose a writing topic from the list to write about, giving a similar variety of reasons (moral, practical, economic, cultural, aesthetic, etc.). The idea is to give them some sort of template to find out exactly what they think on a topic, at least enough to construct a multi-paragraph essay. If you can give these sorts of reasons for or against, say, boys and girls attending separate schools, then you can have a convincingly written essay, content-wise.

Here's the link to the PDF:

http://www.cmsu.edu/PreBuilt/documents/ ... yTests.pdf