Writing Instruction

Are you tutoring your learner towards better writing?  Grammar is often a major problem but poor organization and boring choices can also be a challenge.  For inspiration, watch the following great instruction with your learner or assign it for homework.

http://mondoswritingresources.blogspot.jp/

Written Conversation 

Conduct a conversation with your learner but only in written form. Write a question to your student and give him/her the paper to write an answer on. Go back and forth until your learner has had enough! This can be used to get a writing sample to determine needs for planning future sessions.

Journal Writing

Assign weekly reflective writing to your learner.  Suggest a topic for writing his/her thoughts, perhaps on something you discuss during your session – for example, an experience in the past week, description of a place or event, opinion of a current news item, etc. Write a response after each entry in the journal but don’t correct it unless your learner asks you to.  Use other opportunities to mark writing and use the journal to increase writing.  

 

Some of our learners' biggest English need is to improve their writing so they can enter post-secondary options and/or cope in the Canadian workplace and society.  They need to write email, notes to a child's teacher, etc.  But it's not easy!  Spelling, word order, grammar, sentence structure...  One-on-one tutoring can pinpoint the problems and help overcome them.

 

Vocabulary Ideas

For beginners:  Sticky-note vocabulary

Look around the room and write words of things on sticky notes.  Give to the learner to stick on the correct objects.  At the end of the lesson call out things and ask the student to bring you back the note.  Keep for another time.  Variations: elicit words from the learner and/or learner does the writing.

Vocabulary Cards

Index cards are very useful for learning language. For example:

·        write words on one side of the card and a drawing, definition or sentence on the other, depending on the level of your learner

·        review the words together from time to time, and also encourage your learner to do so on their own

·        learner chooses a card from the pile and uses it in a sentence

·        choose two cards and discuss how these two words could be related

·        choose two cards and write a sentence with the two words

·        sort words in alphabetical order

·        sort words into parts of speech and discuss other forms of the word (eg. adjective “possible” relation to noun “possibility”)

Crossword Puzzle

Make a crossword puzzle with the vocabulary from your lesson.  Use one of the free on-line crossword makers and input sentences with the target word blank.  If your learner needs to add the target word in the sentences as well as on the puzzle, they need to write it twice.  Making a crossword from the Westcoast Reader vocabulary gives great scanning practice.  If you’re not sure how to do this… give me a call!

Expanding Worksheet Exercises

A quick idea to add some extra practice to grammar and vocabulary lessons:  elicit additional possibilities to standard worksheet questions. 

For example:  Lesson on “Daily Routines” -  worksheet sentence is “Dan goes to work at 8:00 a.m.”

·        Dan ____ to work at 8:00 a.m.  Elicit other verbs:  drives, walks, likes…

·        Dan goes to _____ at 8:00 a.m.  Elicit other nouns:  school, church, the gym…

·        Dan _____ goes to work at 8:00 a.m.  Elicit frequency adverbs:  always, often, never…

·        Dan goes to work _____  Elicit other prepositional phrases:  in the morning, on the bus…

You could also assign some sentence writing for homework using this idea.  Offer a challenge to your learner to write ___ correct sentences for the next tutoring session!