Write or Die

Developing your writing skill is a very important part of learning a language. When you write something it's very important to ensure that there are no mistakes before you let anyone read it. In the planning and drafting stages though it can be much more important to get your ideas down on paper first and not to worry about accuracy.


Today's activity focuses on this drafting stage of the writing process and uses a website from Dr Wicked called 'Write or Die'.

The idea of the website is that you must keep writing. If you stop and pause too long your screen will go red and the words you have written will start to disappear until you start writing again.


This should force you to write more quickly and become a fluent writer. You will be able to correct you errors afterwards once you have your basic text. This is that way that most successful writers work in their own language.

Task:

• First choose a subject that you would like to write about. Here are a few suggestions.

You last holiday
A sport that you enjoy
A band or singer that you like
A good film you have seen
Your family
The best day of your life
Your job or the job you would like to have

• Before you start you might like to think of some key points that you would like to include about your topic.
• When you are ready to start writing go to: http://lab.drwicked.com/writeordie.html
• Set you 'Word Goal' to 300. Set the 'Grace Period' to 'Evil' and set the mode to 'Kamikaze'. There's no need to enter a time.
  

• Then when you are ready click on 'Write!' You will see a field for your text. Click on it and start to write about your topic as quickly as you can. Your word count will start to appear in the bottom right hand corner.

• As long as you keep writing the screen will stay white, but if you stop it will go red. If you stop for too long, your words will start to disappear and you will have to write them again.
• Do your best and try to write 300 words. If this is too difficult you can lower the word goal to 200 or 150.
• Once you have to to your word goal, click on the button that says 'Done'. You can then copy your text and start looking at and correcting the errors.
  

Good luck and I hope that you will soon be writing fluently. Come back tomorrow for more EFL ESL activities.

Related links for teachers:

• Animated EFL ESL Writing Prompts
• Writing Project Community
• Prompting reading speeds
• A Picture's worth
• Microblogging for EFL with Plurk
• Becoming a citizen journalist
• Free Web Publishing Community
• Prompting reading speeds
• Extending a Sentence
• 60 Second Writing Activity

Best

Nik Peachey