Last week, our ESL writing class focused on summary writing. We also did an exercise where the students had to combine two different summaries into one story. This week let’s change the writing focus a little.

PROFESSIONAL EMAIL WRITING

Writing an effective email in English is not difficult. But my students need to learn a few basic writing skills.  This lesson will help them in the future, especially when they start looking for a job and need to write emails in English.

Objectives:

1. Learn the format of a professional email message (good for business or school)
2. Learn to write sentences with different purposes.

Intro

Just about every email – in the professional world – is about two things:

1. Giving information
2. Asking for something (a request)

Email is fast, which is good. But you have to write for people who read quickly as well. That means:

1. be clear (few mistakes)
2. be brief (not too wordy, no extra information).

In business, the tone of an email is very important. Tone means the feeling people get when they read your message. Emails should be polite. But unlike a business letter, an email does not usually have to be super polite. Also the style (or formatting) of the email message is important.

EMAIL WRITING WORKSHEETS

This practice worksheet teaches students the basic parts of an email.

This email worksheet helps students analyze an email and find ways to make improvements.

This email writing worksheet has many questions, Students practice email writing by many kinds of requests.

This is week 12 of the university semester. The festival is over, so now it’s time to hit the books for a few week before the final exams. These lessons and activities will help my ESL students learn English, improve vocabulary skills and use key phrases in conversations.

UNDERSTAND LIKE AND LOOK LIKE

LOOK LIKE and LIKE are words and phrases that are easy to confuse. They are also useful when you want to express ideas in a conversation. Let’s do a quick review.

CHARACTER

What is your best friend like?

1. She is kind and talkative.
2. She is like a tiger, strong and aggressive.

APPEARANCE

What does your best friend look like?

1. She is short and a little chubby.
2. He looks like a happy person.

PREFERENCES

What does your best friend like?

1. He likes to go hiking on weekends.
2. She likes eating cheesecake and cooking brunch for her family.

PROBABILITY

1. It looks like it is going to rain later today.
2. It looks like he is going to be sick.
3. She looks like she is going to fall down.

Practice 1: Like and Look Like

This is a pair work ESL speaking activity. Ask your partner the questions. S/he must answer with the correct form of like or look like. Be sure to ask at least 2 follow up questions. Click here if you want to print all of the questions on paper.

STUDENT A

Ask your partner these questions. Use a sentence block: ask at least two follow up questions.

1. What do you like eating for breakfast?
2. What is your home town like?
3. What does your brother or sister look like?
4. What is the climate in Korea like?
5. Does your family like fast food?
6. What is your best friend like?
7. What does your house look like?
8. Would you like to live in Australia?
9. What is President Park like?
10. Who do you look like?

STUDENT B

Ask your partner these questions. Use a sentence block: ask at least two follow up questions.

1. Did you like going to elementary school?
2. What are you like in the early morning?
3. Is there someone in the class who looks like a famous person?
4. Did you like vegetables when you were young?
5. What is television like in Korea?
6. What does the center of your town look like?
7. What don’t you like about Chuseok?
8. What were you like as a child?
9. In your family, who looks like you the most?
10. Do you like fish or meat more?

Practice 2: Like and Look Like

Look at the pictures (click here to look at the pictures). Talk with your partner and ask a few questions.

1. Describe what you see.
2. What do the people look like?
3. What are the people like, do you think?
4. Do you like this picture?
5. Why might this picture be famous or interesting?

Practice 3: Looks Like

Look at the picture. Use LOOKS LIKE to describe the things that might happen. For example:

• It looks like he might fall down.
• She looks like she might have an accident.

This week my ESL students will continue to practice writing summaries. Last week, the students listened to a Steve Jobs video and then wrote a summary. They also wrote a summary about a short story about snow.

ESL Writing Lesson

Here is the writing assignment.

1. Watch this video.
2. Write a one paragraph summary about the story. Be sure to talk about the characters, setting and plot.
3. Does this story have a message?
4. In a second paragraph, write your impressions about this video. Does this video have some connection to the Steve Jobs video message?

Click here to watch the video.

It’s week 11 of the semester, and soon the university will have a festival. Here are some activities my ESL students will use to learn and practice their English speaking skills.

Sentence Patterns: Prepositions plus verb ING

I had a plan to use this activity last week, but we did not have enough time. So let’s try this week.

Look at the words. Make a full question for your partner by adding a preposition. make an answer with a preposition plus ING verb. Ask two or three follow up questions. Here is an example:

• What are you looking forward to these days?
• I’m looking forward to going to the university festival.
• Why?
• Because my favorite rap group is coming to the school and I want to see that show.
• What time is the show?
• The concert starts at 8pm.

1. I am looking forward
2. I am good
3. I am bad
4. I get excited
5. I am used
6. I often think
7. I sometimes dream
8. I always insist

EVERYDAY THINGS

It’s week 11 of the semester. Here are two worksheets for this week’s ESL English listening lessons to help students with their film English.

ESL LISTENING WORKSHEETS

1. This ESL video listening lesson worksheet is about a homeless man.
2. This English lesson is about McDonald’s.

ESL LISTENING VIDEOS

Here are the two videos for this week’s listening classes.

This is the video for the homeless listening lesson.

This video has ten amazing facts about McDonald‘s.

Here is a video, Reach, about a small robot. Does the story have another meaning?

People For Good TV Spot “Parking” English

This short video is ideal for a quick sponge activity. It’s also fun and easy to understand.

There are two formats. The first video is a clip from YouTube. The second video has the same story but it has more interactive elements to teach vocabulary and word sounds.

So far, we have looked at three critical skills that young people need for the future.

Agility

1. Be able to adjust to change and uncertainty.

Critical Thinking and Problem Solving Skills

1. Use different advanced thinking skills (e.g. reasoning, logic, analysis, evaluation, etc.).
2. Look at how facts are proven and conclusions are reached, not just what the facts.

Accessing and Analyzing Information

1. Be able to find the correct information, synthesize it and find ways to use that information in effective ways (e.g. identify trends, invent new things, solve problems).

Today, the fourth critical skill is

COLLABORATION ACROSS NETWORKS AND LEADING BY INFLUENCE

1. Lead by influence, rather than authority (exercise of power).
2. Old command and control system is increasingly less effective with young people.
3. Must be able to collaborate effectively with people in different cultures and time zones.
4. Know how to survive in multicultural environment.
5. Code switch.

SUMMARY MOST LIKELY TO SUCCEED

It is possible to improve the quality of teachers, and therefore student performance, by changing traditional academic requirements, lowering entry level standards with an apprenticeship system and rewarding teachers who deliver extra value.

Traditional academic requirements, like a teacher’s certificate, do not ensure that people have the social or classroom management skills required to foster student success.

An apprenticeship system, with low admission standards and a rigorous evaluation system, would increase the pool of potential teachers and therefore increase the number of people who have the needed skills.

Teachers who have right skills should be rewarded with higher pay in order to encourage them to stay. A system of equal pay based on seniority does not encourage people to become better.

In the end, a new system is needed to find teachers who a certain withitness, a teaching skill that people don’t know they have until they get into the classroom.

Possible Hypotheses

1. the higher the value added, the better the teacher
2. the higher the regard for a student’s perspective, the better the teacher
3. the less emphasis on classroom control, the more lively the class
4. the more personal feedback, the better the teacher
5. the less yes-no feedback, the higher the student motivation
6. the better the interpersonal skills, the better the teacher
7. the lower the entry standards for teaching, the greater the likelihood of finding teachers with the skills that increase student achievement

Comprehension Questions

1. What is value added analysis in the story?
2. How does the author compare the effect of class size and teacher quality?
3. What is a back of the envelope calculation?
4. Why do good teachers have a holding space for students?
5. What’s the difference between good and bad feedback?
6. Describe the features that made the math teacher a good instructor?
7. Why are test scores, graduate degrees and certifications poor indicators of a teacher’s success?
8. How do great teachers effectively handle desist events?
9. What is withitness?
10. What is a percentile?

Last week, my students wrote a paragraph. The purpose of that writing assignment was to read a proverb and express an opinion (agree or disagree) based on some personal experience.

Most students did a great job. Here are a few comments.

1. Phrases with AGREE. You can write “I agree that …” or “I agree with the idea that …”
2. When you write told, you need to say a person. Like, “He told us to come here.”  Or, My mother told the children to turn off the TV. With no person, you can write SAID. “My mother said, “Turn off the TV.”
3. Remember During is usually followed by a noun. For example, “During my childhood.”

Otherwise, good job everyone.

PASSIVE SENTENCES

Today we will practice writing passive sentences.  What’s a passive sentence? Look at these two sentences.

1. The cat ate the fish.
2. The fish was eaten by the cat.

The first sentence is active. The second sentence is passive.

Click here for some grammar rules and a writing worksheet to change active sentence to passive sentences.

Practice Writing

Look at the picture on page 96 in the book. Write one paragraph using passive sentences to describe what’s happening in the restaurant.

SUMMARY WRITING

How to Write a Summary

Watch or read the story carefully.

• A summary is mostly a listening or reading exercise. It is impossible to write an accurate summary after listening or reading just one time.

Begin the summary by mentioning the author and title.

• For example: This is a speech given by Steve Jobs at a university graduation ceremony.

Avoid unnecessary details.

• If the reader wants details, he or she can listen to or read the original story.

Don’t give your own opinion.

• Give the writer’s main ideas. Don’t add your ideas.

Keep it short.

• One paragraph is best for most busy people, even if you make a summary for a report, book or movie.

SUMMARIZE A SHORT STORY

Read this short story. Then write a short, one paragraph summary of the main ideas.

WATCH, LISTEN AND SUMMARIZE

In this writing assignment, the students will watch and listen to a speech that was given by Steve Jobs (did you see the passive sentence I wrote here?). Your job is to watch and listen and then write a one paragraph summary. (Here is a different link if the video does not work.)

In the summary, do three things:

1. write a one sentence introduction to the tell the reader what it is about (where, who, etc);
2. write the main ideas of Steve’s speech in your own words;
3. in a separate paragraph, include some of your own ideas (agree, disagree, why).

REVIEW WRITING

Last week, we studied and practiced writing two kinds of sentences: relative clauses (e.g. who, that, which) and appositives (e.g. McDonalds, a fast food restaurant chain, …..).

Let’s do a little more practice.

1. Go to page 97 in the textbook.
2. Choose four pictures.
3. Write two sentences for each picture to describe the job and a place.
4. Use a relative clause and an appositive.
5. This is a short writing exercise so I want your to be extra careful with your grammar, spelling and style.
6. Concentrate on writing clear sentences with few mistakes.

Here is an example.

Nurses are people who help patients in hospitals. Moon-wha, a hospital near Seomyeon, is famous for helping pregnant woman.

This is week 10 of the semester. Here are some worksheets for this week’s ESL English listening lessons. My students should print both of these worksheets for English class.

1. Friends Birth Mother part 4.
2. Review of the whole TV show.

Here are some activities and worksheets for this week’s English conversation class.

Review TOO

Here are some words. Make questions so that your partner answers with TOO (remember too much, too many, too plus adjective)

1. polluted/Beijing
2. eat/cookies
3. swim/people
4. kimchi/spicy
5. espresso/bitter
6. movie/busy
7. walk/yellow dust
8. barbecued pork/full
9. library/noisy
10. baseball game/boring

 Sentence Patterns: Prepositions plus verb ING

Look at the words. Make a full question for your partner by adding a preposition and ING verb. Ask three follow up questions.

1. I am looking forward
2. I am good
3. I am bad
4. I get excited
5. I am used
6. I often think
7. I sometimes dream
8. I always insist

PICTURE DIFFERENCES

Look at the pictures with your partner. Can you find and describe ten (or more) differences?

 SHORT LOGIC PUZZLES

Here is one more page with four short logic puzzles. Can you find and explain the answers?

VIDEO LESSON

We will also watch a couple of short videos that will be part of our discussion activity.

These videos can help ESL students improve English speaking skills with jigsaw class activity.

Activity Format

1. Pair off students.
2. A watches first video while B stands outside the classroom.
3. B returns.
4. A describes the pilot, setting and characters with as much detail as possible.
5. B asks questions.
6. Watch video. B can say if partner did good job or not.
7. Reverse process with second video.

Omelette from Madeline Sharafian on Vimeo.

Here is another video

Saturday the 14th from Kristjan Lyngmo on Vimeo.

Last week, we looked at and completed a couple of exercises related to agility. This week we will investigate two more skills that young people need to succeed in the future.

Agility

1. Be able to adjust to change and uncertainty.
2. Thrive in a world where there are not many RIGHT answers, unlike the school testing paradigm which sees a black and white universe.

Critical Thinking and Problem Solving Skills

1. Use many different advanced thinking skills (e.g. reasoning, logic, analysis, evaluation, etc.).
2. Look at how facts are proven and conclusions are reached, not just what the facts.
3. Reflect on, question and test our own thinking processes.
4. Ask good questions.

Accessing and Analyzing Information

1. People today have access to so much formation.
2.  It’s important to be able to find the correct information, synthesize it and find ways to use that information in effective ways (e.g. identify trends, invent new things, solve problems).

FRIDAY’S WRITING CLASS

Let’s take a minute to summarize some of the main writing tasks we have finished so far in our class. We have reviewed and practiced:

1. sentences with THAT/WHICH and appositives (see below);
2. one paragraph writing style (thesis sentence, three different kinds of supporting sentences and conclusion);
3. many editing exercises;
4. run on and choppy sentences;
5. the difference between SO and BECAUSE;
6. the difference between LIKE and LOOK LIKE;
7. some summary writing (we need more practice here);
8. some basic grammar items like apostrophes and articles;
9. parallel structure to give your writing a nice style;
10. during and while;
11. many different kinds of writing tools.

Our main writing goal is to get better at explaining ideas and things more clearly. Why?

• This writing skill will help you if you need to write English letters, reports or emails in your future job.

REVIEW AND PRACTICE APPOSITIVES

REVIEW: Look at these sentences. Find the appositive.

1. John, my three year-old brother, broke my favorite toy.
2. I sat beside Mrs. Jones, my kindergarten teacher.
3. Freddy, my shaggy dog, chewed up my mother’s gloves.
4. The insect, a large cockroach, is crawling across the kitchen table.
5. My friend’s car, a Sonata, has worked well for many years.

PRACTICE: With your partner, combine the sentences in each question using appositives.

1. My favorite relative is Joan. Joan is coming to visit next week.
2. My son is an honor student. My son is at the top of his class.
3. I enjoy my hobby. My hobby is stamp collecting.
4. On the largest planets there is no water. Jupiter and Saturn are the largest planets.
5. The sculptor will be remembered for his contributions to art. The sculptor is Michelangelo.
6. Did you read Romeo and Juliet in high school? Romeo and Juliet is an interesting story.
7. There goes the principal. Richard Kim is a principal.
8. Cairo is one of the largest cities in the Middle East. Cairo has many interesting tourist sites.

TODAY’S WRITING ASSIGNMENT

In today’s writing assignment, I want you to write a paragraph that does two things. First, it describes your idea/opinion clearly. Second, you have to explain your reasons based on personal experience.

1. Look at the popular expressions/proverbs below.
2. Discuss the meaning of these phrases with your partner.
3. Be sure to define the key words in each sentence.
4. Do you think they are true or not true? Explain your answer by talking about your personal experience.
5. You will probably want to write two paragraphs. In the first paragraph, you might have a thesis sentence (your main idea), explain the expression/proverb and define the important words. The second paragraph might describe your experience and how it makes you agree or disagree with the expression/proverb.

Expressions

1. Money is the root of all evil.
2. Two heads are better than one.
3. Might is right.
4. Don’t count your chickens before they are hatched.
5. Don’t rock the boat.
6. Patience is a virtue.

LAST CLASS

Last week my ESL students had a midterm exam. many of the students did a great job with the editing exercise and writing a paragraph.

These week our English writing lesson will focus on two kinds of sentences:

1. relative clauses with who, that/which
2. appositives

I don’t like to teach grammar but my students need to know how to write these kinds of sentences in order to write well. So, let’s do it.

Last week the students had midterm exams. Now it’s time to get back to learning English with listening lessons.

ESL Listening Activities

My ESL students should print these two different worksheets for week 9 of the semester.

1. This worksheet has activities for Friends Birth Mother part 2.
2. This file has the ESL worksheet for Friends Birth Mother part 3.

Last week, my ESL students had a mid term exam. Now it is time for my ESL students to return to the classroom to learn English speaking skills.

ESL CONVERSATION WORKSHEETS

Here are some of the things we will learn and study in the conversation class.

1. This ESL conversation worksheet helps students review how to make questions and answers with TOO MUCH and TOO MANY.
2. This worksheet has a few logic puzzles. Solve the problems and explain how you got the answer.
3. This worksheet has a few public signs. Students read the signs, learn the vocabulary and explain the meaning of the signs.

ESL WRITING LESSONS

Here is a review worksheet to help my ESL students learn and improve their English writing. The worksheet has exercises to practice error correction and editing, choppy sentences and run on sentences. It also has writing prompts for paragraph writing.

Here are some suggested answers.

Here is a review of the answers for quiz number 1. My ESL students should review this material carefully if they want to do well on the mid term exam, which is coming next week.

Part 1 Fix the Mistakes

Last weekend, we WENT camping in the mountains. ON Saturday, I WENT hiking and my husband and MY two sons WENT fishing. They love to fish at the lake. They stayed there FOR three hours and CAUGHT six fish. Tonight, we WILL eat out. There is A small STEAK restaurant about one kilometer down the road. AFTER that, we will watch a movie.

Part 2 Fix the Choppy Sentences

Bill really likes to play sports, such as baseball, soccer and hockey.

My teacher, Mrs. Jones, gives lots of homework.

Part 3 Fix the Run On Sentences

There are many interesting places to visit in North Carolina. IN the summer many people like to go to the beaches to swim. YOU can see sharks and squids AT THE AQUARIUM AND polar bears and elephants at the zoo. YOU can also go camping in the mountains. NORTH Carolina is a great place to visit.

Part 4 Write a Paragraph

Fish are great pets because they are pretty, quiet and easy to take care of. Having a fish as a pet means you acquire pretty friends. They not only have many beautiful colors but also diverse shapes, so they make your eyes joyful. To have fish means you don’t have to worry about noise. Dogs and cats make noise but fish are very quiet. During their time in your house, you don’t have any difficulties. They don’t need to walk in the park like dogs and they don’t need much food. So, you can feel easy. Fish are great pets. If you want quiet, pretty friends, I recommend fish.

REVIEW OF WRITING

SO and BECAUSE

• SO means the result, conclusion or consequence.
• BECAUSE tells the reason; why.

Look at these sentences.

1. We needed some fruit so I went to the supermarket.
2. She studied all night because she had an English exam the next day.

Now look at these sentences. What is the difference?

1. I went to the supermarket because we need some fruit
2. She had an English exam the next day so she studied all night..

Practice Writing

Make sentences with SO and BECAUSE for each of these prompts. Be creative.

1. I had to get up early.
2. I’m thirsty.
3. She wants to speak German.
4. My family needed a vacation.
5. They’re going to visit me tomorrow.
6. We went for a walk.
7. My student won one billion won in the lottery.
8. He bought a Smartphone.

This is week seven of the school semester. My English students need to print two different ESL video listening worksheets for this week.

Here is the worksheet from last week. It is a story about a girl named Chelsea Baker.

Friends Video Listening

Here is the ESL listening worksheet for the new Friends TV show. In this show we meet the woman who will have a baby for Monica and Chandler.