A guide on how to teach essay writing skills from the ground up
English as a language that is second
As ESL students become more fluent, it’s time to give attention to how exactly to use that fluency in specific tasks such as making a presentation or writing an essay. The advanced topics you choose should depend upon exactly what your students have planned for future years. In classes with mixed objectives, there’s a necessity for balance to ensure that students that don’t necessarily require the task at hand still profit from the lesson. This can be never truer than when teaching essay writing skills. Classes which are preparing for academic English objectives require the abilities while “business English”, or English for specific purposes classes, might find the entire exercise a waste of their own time. Then you have a class that is mixed so it is recommended to tie essay writing skills to many other important skills such as for example using equivalencies, the appropriate use of linking language and sequencing on paper. Students not thinking about essay writing skills will gain valuable expertise in developing these skills whatever the task.
Build Toward Essay Writing Skills
Start by Modeling Clear Writing at the Sentence Level
The easiest way to approach essay writing skills is always to start at the sentence level. Once students have learned to compose simple, compound and sentences that are complex they have the tools required to write longer documents such as essays, business reports, formal emails, an such like. This help will be found by all students invaluable.
Give attention to Equivalencies
I get the best spot to begin is by using equivalencies. Before moving on, make certain students understand sentence types by writing a straightforward, compound and complex sentence on the board.
Simple Sentence: Mr. Smith visited Washington three years ago.Compound Sentence: Anna advised him contrary to the idea, but he chose to go nonetheless.Complex Sentence: he took the time to visit the Smithsonian since he was in Washington.
Build up students’ understanding of equivalencies by beginning with FANBOYS (coordinating conjunctions), moving on to subordinating conjunctions, and finishing along with other equivalencies such as preposition and adverbs that are conjunctive.
Give attention to Linking Language
Next, students will need to link their language, creating organization write my essay for me with the use of linking language including sequencing. It helps to write out processes at this time. Ask students to think of some process, then use sequencing language to get in touch the dots. It’s a good idea to ask students to utilize both numberings in a sequence of steps and linking through time words.
Writing Essay Practice
Explaining Essay Writing on the Board
Given that students discover how to combine sentences into larger structures, it is the right time to proceed to writing essays. Provide a simple essay to students and have them to recognize various structures / written objectives:
- Underline language that is linking
- Find types of FANBOYS, subordinating conjunctions, conjunctive adverbs, etc.
- What’s the main idea of the essay?
- How does the essay seem to be organized?
- Essays generally contain an introduction, body, and conclusion. Are you able to identify each?
I love to help students by first explaining that an essay is like a hamburger. It is certainly a crude analogy, but students seem to have the notion of the intro and conclusion being just like the buns, even though the content may be the good stuff.
Essay Writing Lesson Plans
There are a number of lesson plans and resources on this site that help out with the many steps tangled up in developing the necessary writing skills. To pay attention to combining simple sentences into more compound structures, use this ?simple to compound sentence worksheet. Once students are comfortable during the sentence level, utilize the essay writing workshop — a complete of four lessons — to proceed from brainstorming, through outlining to essay production that is final.
Challenges With Teaching Essay Writing
The main issue with essay writing is that it is not really necessary for every student as stated at the beginning of this introduction. Another issue is the fact that traditional five paragraph essays are certainly a little old school. However, I still believe that comprehending the structure of one’s hamburger that is basic essay serve students well when putting together future written work.
