ESL Activities for Teaching Grammar and Writing
Of the 4
language skills (writing, listening, speaking and reading), writing is
the most difficult to learn. Writing is your own Native Language is
difficult enough, without adding in the extra barrier of a foreign
language. Anyone can do a poor job of writing in a second or third
language, but to write well in a language that's not your own takes lots
and lots of practice, as well as input from a teacher. I have lots of ESL writing games and fun ESL writing activities that you can use when you're making EFL lesson plans to improve your student's writing abilities.
Telling a Story in your English class
This
is an activity you can do if you're talking about interesting
experiences, achievements, or telling stories. Give the students a few
minutes to write about something that they've experienced in the past.
The examples I give them are: paragliding or bungee jumping, meeting
their girlfriend or boyfriend, a special vacation, eating an interesting
food, etc.When the students are finished writing, have them put their names on the paper. Collect them. At this point, I'll usually put the students in teams of 2 or 3. Then, read the papers out loud to the class and have the students write down the name of the person they think it is. Exchange papers with another group, give answers and you have your winner.
This works well in my classes because even though there are about 20 people, they know each other well because they are all the same major and have all their classes together. If there are some students not of the same major who are repeating the class, I'll make sure to put them in a group with other students who know the majority of the students.
This could also work well for a smaller, more advanced level class of mixed-major students as a "get to know each other" kind of activity.
Blogging for EFL and ESL Students
An easy way to improve writing skills
A
simple, fun activity that you can have students do is start a blog. Set
a minimum number of entries they have to do over the semester and they
can write about anything that they like. Have your students give you the
link and you can make comments about common grammar mistakes that you
see them making. It's an excellent way to administer writing homework
but avoid the paperwork trail. Why is teaching English writing so difficult?
As an ESL Teacher, this is one of the hardest things to teach for the following reasons:1. Sometimes teachers are not that great at writing themselves (see the poor grammar/spelling on Korean forums at ESL Cafe).
2. It requires serious content based teaching. For conversation classes, a little chit-chat here and there counts as "learning/teaching." For a writing class, it doesn't so substantially more prep is required.
3. Students can often "fake it" in a conversation class but in a writing class, it's all down on paper for the world to see and mistakes are made in an obvious kind of way.
4. The students in a writing class all have very different needs. And even if they are at similar levels in their conversational abilities, the spread in writing ability can be huge.
5. It easy to make boring and difficult to make interesting, as opposed to conversation classes that are very easy to make interesting.
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