Writing activities for beginning ESL students

Writing activities for beginning ESL students Jodi Versaw jversaw@iecminnesota.org

What do you remember about learning to write? • What do you remember about learning to write in a foreign language? Opening questions

Learning to write… • takes years. • takes practice. • for some (many?) students is a lower priority than learning to speak. Learning to write

Education level • no formal schooling; non-literate • limited formal schooling, low-literate • “emergent readers” (writers) Student characteristics that influence writing ability

Cultures of origin that value oral communication over written communication Student characteristics that influence writing ability

Native languages with different alphabets and writing structure • Russian, Tibetan, Korean – different alphabets • Arabic – unwritten vowels, written from right to left • Amharic – characters represent consonant + vowel Student characteristics that influence writing ability

Amharic

Brief questions, thoughts, observations? Learning to write

Writing activities

Complete beginners need to start by practicing letter formation in English. They can do this by tracing and copying letters and words. Letter formation

Longman ESL Literacy • Name grid – print out and laminate • use Comic Sans font; change color to gray; expand character spacing Letter formation

Handwriting worksheets • Writing wizard Letter formation

Beginners with command of the alphabet need support in creating full sentences. Basic sentence formation

Teacher-modeled writing • Writing from “mingle” activity • Writing from pictures Basic sentence formation

Higher beginners who can put words together into sentences need support and encouragement to put their own ideas and thoughts into writing. Writing original thoughts and ideas

Free writing – starter question, 5 minutes to write as much as possible: • What food do you like? What food don’t you like? Why? • Write about the people in your family. What are their names? Where do they live? • Write about your kitchen. What is in your kitchen? What do you do in the kitchen? • Write about yesterday. What did you do? Where did you go? What did you eat? Writing original thoughts and ideas

Journals • Personal observations • Dialog between student and teacher Writing original thoughts and ideas

Simple poems – less focus on sentence structure, more focus on creativity • MLC volunteer curriculum Beginning ESL: Writing poetry Writing original thoughts and ideas

When high beginners have some self-confidence with writing words and sentences, they should be exposed to basic paragraph form. Building additional skills

MLC volunteer curriculum • Beginning – Descriptive writing • Intermediate – Personal writing Building additional skills

Writing activities for beginning ESL students