Lernning Outside The Classroom : 8 TIPS TO IMPROVE YOUR ENGLISH WRITING SKILLS

Strong writing skills in English come from practice and determination. No one is born an excellent writer. Learning to be an excellent writer in English takes a lot of time and practice, anyone can be a good writer if they are determined enough.

Below are 8 Tips to Improve Your English Writing Skills:

1. Keep All of your Writing in One Place

Buy a notebook or journal or start an electronic journal. By keeping your writing all in the same place, you will be able to see how much you are improving and keep it organized.

2. Practice Writing in English Daily

    The importance of writing daily is that you start to create a new habit. Writing every day in English will soon become natural and something you look forward to. You will not see a significant improvement if you are not dedicated to becoming a better writer in English. You cannot create awesome stories and papers if you never try.

3. Pick a Topic and WRITE!

   Don’t get stuck on figuring out what to write about. You can write about anything. You can write about what you do, things you hear or see, news, or make up a story. If you do get stuck, use some of English Tonight’s writing prompts to help you get started.

4. Write More than One Draft

    Draft means a preliminary version of piece of writing. Sometimes, your best writing becomes better after you take a break and work on a second or third draft. When you revise (or rewrite) your work you are often able to get your message across more clearly. You make think of things that you did not think to write in the first draft and you can add it in a later draft.

5. Use Online Resources to Correct your Grammar

    You don’t need to know everything about English grammar. Use online resources, such as Grammarly, GrammarCheck or GrammarBook.com to help you answer a grammar question when it comes up. You could also switch the spell and grammar check on MS Word, your iPad or Google Doc to check your spelling and grammar in English.

6. Think Outside the Box (or Lines)

    Don’t write about the same thing every day or you will get bored. Try writing the same story from different perspectives or different tenses. If you are writing a story about a baby that won’t stop crying; first, it could be the mother telling the story; then from the perspective of the baby. Or you could write it in present moment…. ‘My baby hasn’t stopped crying in five days…’ and then write in the perspective of a pregnant woman that is thinking about having a baby that won’t stop crying. Don’t write about topics in the obvious way. Be creative!

7. Have a Friend Edit Your Writing

    Have a friend that knows English correct or edit your work. Having another person read your work helps generate more ideas to better your writing. You could have them edit everything or just a part that you are stuck on. Often having another set of eyes look at your writing helps find mistakes that you have overlooked.

8. Find the Best Place for You to Write

    You should try writing in different places or at different times of the day. Maybe you have writer’s block at night; try getting up 15 minutes earlier and writing in the morning. Maybe you have trouble writing where there is a lot of noise; try writing in a quiet and comfortable place. Experiment in finding the right (or write?) environment for you to write.

To sum up, writing is a process; the more you work on your writing the better it (and you) will get.

Cite from: http://english-tonight.com/tag/english-writing-tips/

Reflection task-based language teaching approach on topic “house chore” (Nattakarns’)

This article is about reflection Nattakrn’s lesson plan. The purposes of article is to reflect task-based language teaching approach on topic “house chore” and hope readers can adapt steps approach in their class. Moreover, the topic also inserts public mind to students.

          Begin with interesting video about house chore, it was short cartoon video and it could attract the attention of the students, not less. What is the more, she showed and let students pronounced the basic vocabularies about house chore, what is more interesting? She has sounds and picture below the vocabs for students had more understanding. In addition, she showed part of speech of each words, I think it good for students to bring those words apply in sentence because they know part of speech of them. Next, I would like to talk about movement in her class. She had group activity for her student so fun, that’s Charade game, student had act out as meaning of the vocab that they picked from the box, then let their members in group guess what that word is about. It’s activity by structural “she has to mop the floor and I have to take out the trash.  (Acting out)” Moreover, she had showed sample by saying before allowed students did the activity. And finally she did as another, she had taught about structure of grammar point; present perfect tense. Surely, this step is Grammar focus.

            Conclusion, the activities are fun and appropriate with her students’ skill level, primary level. On the whole, she had good personality, nevertheless, she should has more confident because of its no matter if teacher lack confidents and trust in herself. I think, it may be better done.

Reflection task-based language teaching approach on topic “The garbage” (Atinuts’

           This article is about reflection Atinut’s lesson plan. The purposes of the article is study communicative language teaching in task-based language teaching approach on topic “The garbage” and hope readers can adapt steps approach in their class. Moreover, the topic also inserts public mind to students.

            First of all, I would like to show aims of her lesson plan; students can ask and answer the information about the various kinds of garbage. In the second part, I would like to talk about the objectives of it. Firstly, students will be able to ask and answer information about the various kinds of garbage. Second, students will be able to understand meaning of the vocabulary about garbage, for example waste tire, waste can, waste glass, waste paper, etc, which she taught them in first step of pre-task. Lastly, students will be able to use yes/no questions of present simple tense (structure of “Is this a/an….follow by kinds of  garbage…”) to ask and answer the information. What is the more, you will understand the processes based on task-based language teaching about teaching public mind to students with garbage disposal. In this part, you will see advantages and disadvantage of the processes because I reflect the lesson plan to show you right now. In the lesson plan emphasizes task based activities by working in groups and attacks students’ with game, for instance, " Where  should  I  go ? ".  This game one of the students have to be close his eyes and each students in their group have to run to get a garbage and bring it back to theblinded students. After that he have to ask "Is this a / an .......... ?"  If his answer correct he has to put that garbage in the correct bin also. From this point the students is going to have fun and also learn how to ask and give information with their friends. Moreover, they are going to learn how to divide the garbage in each kinds of bin. This activity was fun and it has movement in classroom activity. Besides, she also use colorful power point slices in the last steps. Finally, teacher explained the grammar point. The interrogative sentence of Present Perfect Tense, how to use and give example according the handout given. In addition, teacher let students practice with partner by the sentence given. Teacher also selected some of her students to   present to the class. Next, let’s talk about instruction Medias to prepare the activities. There are 5 items; hand out, work sheet, power point, information gap and authentic materials.

            To summarize, all thing you considered, task-based language teaching approach are divided into 3 parts; pre-task, task cycle and post-task. The activities always emphasize students learning by doing with games and worksheets. More important, after finished class teacher shoulds have measurement and evaluation by using rubric of each skill. It depends on the skill that teacher want to teach students.

Toxic  garbage   

 

                                         

                                                        Recyclable  garbage                    

         

                                                        

                                                      Other  waste

Reflection task-based language teaching approach on topic “Top 10 Bad Manners” (Thanaporns’)

This article about reflection Thanaporn’ lesson plan. The purposes of article is to reflect task-based language teaching approach on topic “Top 10 bad manners” and hope readers can adapt steps approach in their class. Moreover, the topic also inserts public mind to students.

First step teacher introduces topic by using video about bad table manners and let students guess about the topic. Nevertheless, the video is too long time, it might made students bored. Then teacher taught vocabularies about the topic. That’s process in pre-task. By the way, let’s move to task-cycle, teacher let students read the given passage about top 10 bad manners and answer questions from the passage and its pair work. After that, teacher allowed students spoke sentences comment by structural “You should ......”. It’s a good way for students practice their speaking skill. On the other hand, other activities always emphasize in reading skill.  Finally, teacher explained about grammar points that students had learnt before, in the other word, that’s grammar focus which is the last step for task-based language teaching approach. On the whole, teacher has attractive activities and instructional media as video to attacks mention from students

To sum up, Thanaporn devideed her task in 3 parts and all of them invite students learning by doing from tasks and works. Moreover her activities have clearly objectives, that’s focus on reading skill.

                                                   Bad table manner