FOCUS ON WRITING

I. A letter to a pen friend:

 

1.Put your address in the top right-hand corner (but not your name).

2. Write the date below.

3. Letter always begins with “Dear…”

4. Answer the questions: who are you? Where were you born?

Where do you live? What does your family do? How old are you?

What do you do every day? Why are you learning English?

What do you like doing in your free time? What did you do last summer?

5.Finish the letter with Best wishes or Regards.

6. Sign your name.

Note: if you have forgotten smth. add with PS at the end. You may use commas, contractions.

 

 

II. A formal letter/e-mail:

1. Put your address in the top-hand corner (not your name)

2. Put the name and address of the person you are writing on the left, above the greeting

3. Write the date under your address

4. Make sure you begin with “Dear…” and use a formal ending “Yours faithfully” or “ Yours sincerely”

5.Always write “ I look forward for hearing from you’ before the ending

6. Sign your name

7. Write your name in capital letters under the signature

8. Use formal language (Could you…? I would be grateful if you could…)

 

Note: Don’t use contractions in formal letters.

 

III. Writing an interview:

 

1. Write an introductory paragraph by briefly describing where you the interview take place and describe the person.

2. Write the questions first. Four or five will probably be enough. Try to make them lead on from each other. Make the last question smth. about future.

 

IV. Writing a biography:

 

1. Write at least three paragraphs, one for the birth and early years, one or two for the Middle Ages, and one for the last years.

2. Link events with time expressions (immediately, after, then, later, etc.).

3. Use narrative tenses. If a person you are writing about is still alive, you may use

“ Since + Pr.Perfect in the last paragraph.

4. Be careful with prepositions of time.

 

V. Writing a story:

1. Always invent plot before you start writing.

2. Divide your story into three parts – opening paragraph, body of the story, closing paragraph.

3. Use a mixture of narrative tenses.

4. Link events with time expressions (immediately, after, then, later, etc.).

5. Use adverbs (desperately, fortunately, etc.) to make your story vivid.

 

VI. Written exercises:

 

These are taken to mean exercises to practice grammatical structures, taking the form of writing sentences from the prompts following a particular pattern, answering questions using a particular pattern, sentence completion, matching halves of sentences and writing out the complete sentence, and gap-filling using the correct tense or word.

 

VII. Dictations:

 

The discussion on dictation raised a number of interesting points. However, dictation is a form of writing and the teacher in the group should read in short phrases repeated twice, corrected and so on. The student should recognize the word, the phrase, and the sentence.

 

VIII. Some writing options:

 

1. Think about the suggested activity or approach and how to use or adapt it in you work.

2. Think of the purpose of writing activities.

3. Compose the list of key words in chronological order.

4. Provide only a skeleton structure of the story. Provide the plan of the story.

5. Remember the basic information of the subject.

6. Try it on.