How to improve your writing skills with regular practice and feedback

Developing your writing can be really challenging, especially at higher levels when you are working without the support of a teacher to give you detailed feedback. The best way to really make significant improvements to your writing though is to make sure you do some everyday.

In this activity we will be looking at how you can get ideas for daily prompts so that you have something to write about, and how you can get some very detailed and specific feedback and correction of your writing.

To do these we’ll be looking at three websites, two which provide stimulation for writing topics, these are Creative writing prompts from Writers Digest  and the Toasted Cheese calendar of daily prompts.

To get the feedback on your writing we will be using a plagiarism checker called Grammarly. Grammarly doesn’t just check for plagiarism though, it also checks for errors and suggests ways you can improve your text.

Task

• If you want a more challenging writing task, go to http://www.writersdigest.com/prompts. 
• Here you will see a page full of scenario prompts that you can write your own story around. The story or scene must be less than 500 words. I particularly like this site because if you click on ‘Read more’, you can find texts submitted by other writers and if you log in you can also submit your own text.

• If you would like a shorter and simpler assignment go to http://www.toasted-cheese.com/webcal/webcal.cgi Here you will see a calendar with a prompt for each day of the month. Choose the one for today and compose your text.

• Next comes the interesting part. Once you have finished your text go to http://www.grammarly.com/ and copy and paste your text into the field and click on ‘Check your text'.

• To the left of the screen you will get an overall score for your writing and some idea of some of the problems.
• To get really detailed feedback and suggestions for correcting your text, you’ll need to register. Grammar.ly offers a free 7 day trial, though you will need to enter some payment details and remember to cancel your subscription before the 7 days ends if you find that the suggestions aren’t helpful or you aren’t really using the service.
• Once you have logged in you will be able to see your text and work through the suggested corrections.
• You can select which things the site checks for.

•  You can also tell it what kind of document you are working on so that the feedback you get is more specific.

• Then you can work through selecting the corrections you want to make.

• Finally, when you have finished, you can download your document as a final copy.

• Make sure you keep both versions of your text, then in a few weeks time go back to the original text and see if you can find the errors and correct them. 
• Once you have done that, compare with the version you corrected in Grammarly and see how many of the errors you found.

Doing small amounts of work, regularly like this can really start to improve your writing and make you more aware of your own errors and where they are likely to occur, but you do have to do it regularly.

Good luck with that and I hope your writing soon improves.

Related links for teachers:

• The Digital Classrooms e-book project
• My learning technology reading list
• My collection of tools for learners
• My Facebook page
• Picture phrases
• Personalised flashcards
• Animating vocabulary
• Exploiting Image Sequences

 Best
Nik Peachey

Writing an Essay in English

For many people writing an essay in their first language is a challenge, but writing one in a second language can be even more demanding and stressful. The key to good essay writing though in any language is good planning.


Today's activity looks at a tool called Essay Map to help you effectively plan your essay. It takes you through the processes involved in planning and at the end of the activity you can print up your plan to use it as a basis for you essay.

Task:

• Before you begin you should think about the theme of your essay. You could to write about one of the topics from the lectures in our previous activity Listening to Lectures in English or you could watch a lecture on Academic Earth.
• If you prefer to practice with an easier topic you could write about:
  - : The challenges faced by young people in your country
  - : Technology and the opportunities it offers for the future
  - : The most interesting places in your country
  - : Why you study English
  
  
• When you have chosen a topic go to http://www.readwritethink.org/materials/essaymap/
  

• Type in your name and the topic you are going to write about. Then go to the introduction and add a few sentences. Then click on the arrow to add main points

• You only need to give brief sentences here. Remember this is only the plan and these are only the main areas you will cover when you write the essay.

• Once you have these three main ideas you will be able to move on through the map and add the key points you want to include in each of these sections. Complete the whole of you plan and add a conclusion.
  
• Then print out your plan. next comes the hard part. You need to sit down and actually turn your plan into an essay. Writing the essay though will now be much easier, as you have done the thinking part and now you just have to concentrate on the language and making your thoughts clear.

I hope you find this activity useful. Here can you can find 20+ more activities to improve your writing.

Related links for teachers:

• Simple Tool for Collaborative Writing
• Creating an interactive cloze text
• MS Word tutorial 1: Adding ‘comments’
• Animated EFL ESL Writing Prompts
• Picture phrases
• Using wikis for teacher development

Best

Nik Peachey

I spotted the link to this site on the Micronarratives blog

Listening to Lectures in English

For anyone thinking of studying abroad at a university in an English speaking country, one of the big challenges will be listening to lectures and taking notes. Today's activity will help you to practice and develop this skill using authentic lectures from The British Academy.


These lectures are around an hour long, but you don't have to listen to the lectures all at one time, in fact it might be better to listen in segments of around ten minutes until you build up your listening and note taking skills.

Task:

• Go to the British Academy site at: http://britac.studyserve.com/home/default.asp and scroll down the list of lectures. Try to choose one that sounds interesting. I would recommend 'A Question of Culture' as the speaker has a good clear voice and speaks at a good steady pace.
• When you find a lecture that interests you, click on the ear icon on the right.
  

• This will show you a brief introduction to the lecture. You should read it first before you listen. Then get some paper and a pen ready to make notes.

• Then click on the 'Hear lecture now' link and the audio player will open in a pop up window. It may take a little while to load. When it has finished, click on the 'Play' button and start listening and taking notes.

• Try taking notes for around 5 - 10 mins. At first you can use the pause button so tat you have time to write. You may also want to do some background research on the topic to help you understand. You could do this by taking some keywords from the introduction and searching Wikipedia for more information.
• Try to do this for about 10 mins each day. This will soon start to develop your listening and note taking skills.
  

Good luck. Try some more listening activities

Related links for teachers:

• Exam Tips
• Try a TOEFL Reading Test
• Try a TOEFL Listening Test
• Preparing EAP Students
  
• World Languages Assessment

Best

Nik Peachey

I spotted the link to this site on the Micronarratives blog