Writing Skills for EFL/ESL Students

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Writing Skills for EFL/ESL Students

Revising your own writing

Although I am not a writing teacher at the university where I work, students often ask me for some assistance for their compositions (term and research papers, essays, and paragraphs). To give them some guidance to self-check their work, it is customary to provide them with a copy of the questionnaire below. The idea behind this is to make students aware of their writing, so they can develop themselves as writers and self-editors.

This questionnaire is the product of a joint effort of an ex-partner of mine, Mauricio Parra, and me. We decided to create this set of questions to prompt some writing skills among our students, to make them aware of the importance of editing, and to provide them with a simple but direct guide to check their writing.

Writing Skills

Revising your own writing

Check your writing with these questions before you turn a paper in:

1	Did you do some prewriting activity such as brainstorming before you began to write your composition?
2	Will the first part of your writing (thesis or topic sentence) catch your reader’s attention?
3	Did you also include a title for your composition? Are you sure that you centered and capitalized it correctly?
	Faulty	Television draws teens into a vast wasteland
	Better	Television Draws Teens into a Vast Wasteland
4	Can you underline the topic sentence (TS) in each paragraph? If you can’t, write a topic sentence to state the introduction to it. And be sure you didn’t forget to indent your paragraph.
5	Does each sentence in the development of the paragraph(s) refer to the central idea stated in the topic sentence? Throw out irrelevant sentences or move them to a better location.
6	Did you avoid writing sentences with the word it that have people doing things?
	Faulty	It was decided that company policy be changed to allow employee selection of personal leave days.
	Better	The personnel committee decided to change company policy and allow employees to select their own personal leave days.
7	How about other pronouns? Are pronoun references accordingly?
	Faulty	The best job a person can get is in Tourism. There he or she can meet a lot of people, and they can make good money.
	Better	The best job a person can get is in tourism. There he or she can meet a lot of people, and he or she can make good money.
8	Does each sentence follow the preceding one logically? Do you give your readers clues (words such as thus, therefore, first, because, but, etc.) to help them follow your thoughts? If not, rearrange sentences and add transitions where necessary.
9	Do sentences sound complex because they’re long? Break them up into simple sentences.
	Faulty	The cost of leaving for retired Americans living in Costa Rica is quite good for them due to the exchange rate, which rarely goes up, and their retirement plans in dollars, which are higher for Costa Rican living standards.
	Better	The cost of living for retired Americans living in Costa Rica is quite good for them. This is so due to the exchange rate which rarely goes up. Another reason is linked to their retirement plans in dollars, which are higher for Costa Rican living standards.
10	Are you sure that you are not using run-on sentences, -sentences which are just separated by commas? Check punctuation for your TS and supporting sentences (sentences in the paragraph development) as well.
11	Did you include a concluding sentence (CS)? Did you use any signal expression like as a conclusion, to sum up, or to conclude to remind you of the CS.
12	Do you repeat the same words too often? Do you use words you don’t need? Omit needless words and search the thesaurus for useful synonyms.
13	Did you cut unnecessary words, words that are not really necessary to include them?
	Faulty	After a time interval of one to two minutes, the tone usually stops.
	Better	After one to two minutes, the tone usually stops.
14	Did you substitute descriptive verbs for vague verbs? If so, try to use more descriptive verbs in your writing.
	Faulty	He went to the island.
	Better	He sailed to the island.
15	Read each sentence in the paragraph aloud to recognize errors in grammar, spelling of words you were not sure of, and punctuation. Correct these as well as typos.
16	Work with a partner and provide him/her with a copy of these grading criteria along with your paper. Pay attention to the aspects your partner will check in your composition to improve it.
	Prewriting 2 pts. Title, TS, CS 2 pts. Indentation 1 pt. Word choice 3 pts. Conclusion 3 pts. Unity, coherence 3 pts. Grammar 3 pts. Punctuation 3 pts. Total 20 pts.

Hopefully, this kind of self-check post-writing task can make students much more aware of what it really means to sit down and write a piece that contains no mistakes. In doing so, and by working cooperatively with some other partner(s), students can get to produce “great” pieces to be submitted to their writing instructors.

ETo fully develop and comprehend this teaching issue, it’s advisable to research and expand these areas:

1	Tips to improve one’s writing
2	The writing process
3	How to write thesis and topic sentences
4	Punctuation for EFL/ESL learners
5	Indentation

Professor Jonathan Acuña-Solano

ELT Instructor & Trainer based in Costa Rica

Curricular Developer at CCCN

Senior ELT Professor at Universidad Latina

Freelance ELT Consultant four OUP in Central America

For further comments or suggestions, reach me at:

@jonacuso – Twitter

jonacuso@gmail.com – Gmail

Other blogs and sites I often write for my students at the university are:

1. http://bin-02.blogspot.com/	2. http://bin-04.blogspot.com/
3. http://bin-06.blogspot.com/	4. Computering Applications in Education

Get a copy of the article over here.

Writing Skills for EFL/ESL Students by Jonathan Acuña

Sunday, March 17, 2013

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