The Writing Process

We all know how hard it is to write , even in our own language so when the task is writing in a foreign language it seems  like a higher mountain to climb.

Why do students find writing such a difficult process?

The reasons are several and they can vary from student to student. I find that most of my students leave their written assignment until the last minute and writing requires time ; most students ,when they finally get down to writing , don’t really know what they want to say or where to start , there isn’t any  brainstorming process and students, very seldom , write a first draft.These are important strategies to consider , especially when your essay is going to be graded.

This is my small contribution to helping you write better. I only hope you find it useful!

Editing students’ written assignments

This post is mainly intended for anyone who needs to add comments to a written document. In my case and being a teacher, it has been used to correct essays as more and more often my students seem to be committed to saving the rain forest by not wasting unnecessary paper and sending me their assigned tasks via email instead. I have often used Jing to explain their mistakes but this is an easier way to do so and, in my opinion, as effective.
Of course, I am aware that most of you know how to add comments to a word document so this article is only for those who, like me, have just discovered some of the miracles MS Word can do to help us spice up the always boring task of corrrecting compositions. Before you read further you might like to see an example of what can be done with the Reviewing Toolbar.

 

Where can you bring this toolbar up? Navigate to the View menu bar and select Toolbar and then Reviewing and you will see the Reviewing toolbar appear with a set of icons you’ll have to learn. Then, select an area of the text that you want to comment on and click on the “Comment” icon, type your comment on the red bubble which will appear in the margin. I have found that in MS Word 2003 the red bubble will only show if you’re in the Word Print Layout View or View Web Design .
That way the document looks as it might if I had printed a version of the original and I had marked it up with a red pen.
Another thing you can do is cross out a word(s). To do this you select the word(s) you want to cross out and choose Format/Strikethrough.

Easy, isn’t it? I hope you find it useful !

Lesson Plan: Verb “to be” and Interrogative Pronouns

It’s never  easy to find stimulating real-life   activities for elementary students but on one of the few ocassions I was watching TV  this week  I saw a TV commercial that  I thought I could use to revise the verb “to be” with my elementary students.
The ad campaign for 212VIP CH is led by the top Australian model Catherine McNeil and accompanying her on the TV commercial is Spanish model Jon Kortajarena. Enjoy!!

And now, let’s concentrate on Interrogative Pronouns with the help of the  invaluable Photopeach. This is for my youngest students .I hope it helps you !!

Learning Chocolate… learning vocabulary

Learning Chocolate… I wonder why they’ve chosen this name for a website that helps students improve vocabulary but it certainly does so and in a very efficient way.
There are lots of vocabulary categories to choose from ranging from the easy  Numbers or the Seasons to the more sophisticated Insect Life Cycle.

How do you learn with this page?

Choose a category and begin to learn by choosing from five different activities. Every exercise is taught and revised with the help of pronunciation: for example , in some games you have to match the audio to the word or the words to the pictures and you can also do  a ” fill in the gaps” exercise or a dictation.

What I specially like about this site is that it uses visual aid to help students learn better and faster and at the same time  teaches them how to pronounce  .

So,  I was going to point out that working  with Learning with chocolate  you kill two birds with the same stone but noooo…. you kill four birds … ’cause you can learn Chinese  Mandarin or Japanese too. As always , the choice is yours!

Blog de Cristina is also on Facebook . Follow me!

Free Audio Books

When I am in the gym trying to sweat my kilos away I’ve sometimes considered not listening to music and  instead ,making a better use of the time I spend there. Today I’ve bumped into this page and I have thought :” That’s what I was looking for!” So instead of running with Lady Gaga I’m going to start running with Jane Austen, Mark Twain or Virginia Wolf.
In Books Should Be Free you can find a lot of free audio books divided according to their genre: adventure, comedy, romance, fairy tales, poetry…etc and you can download them in mp3,iPod or iTunes format . Now, you have no excuse for not practising English, even when you’re at the gym!!