WritingForResults gives step-by-step guidance and templates for those who need to prepare briefings for cabinet ministers, senior executives and supervisors. As a point of reference, this site uses Government of Canada memos, letters, briefing notes and briefing books prepared for ministers and deputy ministers. However, it takes only minor changes to adapt the material to diverse governments and other organizations worldwide. It is equally easy to adapt the material to briefings prepared for a supervisor or a colleague.You will find 312 pages of guidance and over 260 templates herefor briefing notes, briefing books, memos and letters. Read MORE...
Academic reading and writing course focuses on developing critical reading and research skills. Students read abridged and authentic texts, conduct online research, learn how to paraphrase, edit, summarize, and write academic essays. LEARN MORE...
Teaching Writing
Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.- William Strunk Jr., Elements of Style Ideas In teaching writing we should consider the following aspects: 1. Age of the students. 2. Student motivation level, their aims of learning. 3. Language level. 4. Objectives and requirements of the course. We can involve students in the following ways: 1. Choose topics carefully by considering students’ interests. 2. Develop concrete skills with the help of specific exercises focusing on a specific area which needs to be improved such as structure, tense usage, creative writing, etc. 3. Choose the right type of correction; it can be teacher-guided or in small groups (learning from each other), or other. Basic Difficulties Mistakes show us what we need to learn. - Peter McWilliams Spelling English spelling is difficult to master. Teach your students how to use computer tools such as spell checkers, dictionaries and translation tools. These tools can be more reliable than some English native speakers who may have forgotten correct spelling of words (or never knew it). There are two basic types of problems related to spelling (also, pronunciation): 1. Students know words by sound but cannot write them correctly. 2. Students see words written but they do not know how to pronounce them. Structure of Text Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go. - E. L. Doctorow Structure of text is related to cohesion and coherence: 1. Cohesion includes mechanical links at a language level - all grammatical and lexical links in the text: pronouns, tenses, synonyms, etc. Cohesion establishes connections within a text at various levels, such as paragraph, sentence and phrase. 2. Coherence establishes connections of denotative and connotative meanings and sequences of ideas that relate to each other (at an ideas level). These are step-by-step logical sequences in texts - from general to particular, from statement to example, from problem to solution, from question to answer, from claim to counter-claim, from dilemma to choice, from anticipation to outcome, etc. Other Problems Writing cannot express all words, words cannot encompass all ideas. - Confucius Tenses English language has a large number of tenses with some slight differences, often causing confusion. Functions of auxiliaries The basic difficulties include negation, inversion, and tag questions. Modal verbs English also has a considerable number of modal auxiliary verbs with different meanings. For example, the opposite of "You must be here at five" (obligation) is usually "You don't have to be here at five" (lack of obligation, choice), while "must" in "You must not drink the milk" (prohibition) has a different meaning from "must" in "You must not be an Englishman" (deduction). This complication takes substantial work for the majority students to master. Idiomatic usage English has a lot of idiomatic expressions which cause difficulties to ESL learners, e.g. once in a blue moon, out of the blue, to see red, pie in the sky, white elephant, etc. Articles The meanings of the definite (the), indefinite (a, an) and zero articles are often misunderstood. See examples here.
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