esl essay writing tips

By Kenneth Beare There are many ways to write an essay. However, the standard essay form follows the same basic patterns as discussed in this 'how to'. Most essays take a repetitive form sometimes known as the hamburger essay. What this means is that the introductory and concluding paragraphs are very similar, whereas the most important information is found in the body of the essay. Think of a hamburger: The buns cover the top and the bottom - the introduction and conclusion - and provide a nice covering for the most important part of the meal the burger. Difficulty: AverageTime Required: 30 minutesHere's How:Select the topic of your essay.Choose the central idea, or thesis, of your essay. For example: Information technology has revolutionized the way we work.Outline your essay into introductory, body and summary paragraphs.The introductory paragraph begins with an interesting sentence. For example: Home workers have grown from 150,000 to over 12 million in the past 5 years thanks to the wonders of the computer. There are a number of types of introductions: Interesting statistics, a quote from a famous person, or a rhetorical question such as Did you know that. After this first sentence, add your thesis statement from above. The thesis clearly outlines what you hope to express in the essay.Use one sentence to introduce every body paragraph to follow. This linking to ideas you will develop further in your body paragraphs provides structure to your essay.Finish the introductory paragraph with a short summary or goal statement. For example: Technological innovation has thus made the traditional workplace obsolete. In each of the body paragraphs (usually two or three) the ideas first presented in the introductory paragraph are developed. Remember that referring to ideas first introduced in the initial paragraph provides structure to your essay.Develop your body.
Teaching ESL students to write essays can be frustrating for both teachers and students. Students need to be able to write more than a sentence or two, and the additional effort necessary for writing an essay can lead to a lot of unclear and confusing sentences. Those same sentences can give teachers a headache when correcting the writing exercises. Luckily, there’s a secret to dramatically improving the clarity in ESL essays. The problems of clarity can almost always be traced back to one element: the thesis statement. If students aren’t taught to write a coherent thesis statement, the rest of their essays will remain unclear. So below we’ll look at four simple ways to impressively improve clarity in your students’ writing – just by focusing on the thesis statement. But before we get there, let’s consider the ins and outs of a thesis statement, plus some common problems you’ll encounter in ESL writing exercises. What Is a Thesis Statement? To improve clarity in ESL writing exercises, you must first teach students what a thesis statement is. Students who do not understand what it is will not be able to effectively follow any instruction on improving that all-important sentence in their essays. Because most ESL teachers now instruct students how to write five-paragraph essays, the thesis statement is easier to identify and write. In such essays, the thesis statement can be formulaic; students answer the essay question and provide three reasons/points of discussion related to the topic in a parallel construction. Example: People should learn a foreign language because it improves career prospects, develops creative thinking and decreases the risk of Alzheimer’s. Once the students have their answer to the question, they can see that this sentence is directly related to their three body paragraphs. Teachers should explain that the students can write their topic sentences.
Some of the basic problems that turn up in papers written by English as a Second Language students are surprisingly uniform. This is both good news and bad news for ESL writers. The bad news is that these problems become ingrained over time, and it's difficult to break out of old writing habits. The good news is that we can focus on relatively few trouble spots in order to show quick improvements in writing. The most universal ESL trouble spots arise from fundamental differences between English and other languages. Since most Asian languages, for example, do not contain the same types of inflected words that English contains, students accustomed to communicating in these languages are simply not in the habit of using English inflection. An inflected word, broadly speaking, is any word that changes form depending on context by taking an affix. These include nouns that become plural and verbs that change tense. English inflection becomes intensely complex because words in a sentence have to agree with each other, and changing the form of one word often requires changing the form of several others. The best way to become more proficient in writing English actually doesn't require much extra work, if one is already comfortable with the vocabulary and the basic subject-verb structure of the language. Quick improvements can result from simply listening closely to good English usage. That might mean changing the radio station in your car to something like NPR, and paying close attention to the most formal talk radio out there can easily be more instructive than a thousand lectures. Of course, reading magazines that focus on good writing can't hurt. Entertainment Weekly, for example, actually has some good writing that won't put most students to sleep. A good number of commercial magazines, though, contain fairly bad writing, so choose carefully. Editors For Students offers.
Despite the fact that, as Shakespeare said, the pen is mightier than the sword, the pen itself is not enough to make an effective writer. In fact, though we may all like to think of ourselves as the next Shakespeare, inspiration alone is not the key to effective essay writing. You see, the conventions of English essays are more formulaic than you might think – and, in many ways, it can be as simple as counting to five. The Five Paragraph Essay Though more advanced academic papers are a category all their own, the basic high school or college essay has the following standardized, five paragraph structure: Paragraph 1: Introduction Paragraph 2: Body 1 Paragraph 3: Body 2 Paragraph 4: Body 3 Paragraph 5: Conclusion Though it may seem formulaic – and, well, it is - the idea behind this structure is to make it easier for the reader to navigate the ideas put forth in an essay. You see, if your essay has the same structure as every other one, any reader should be able to quickly and easily find the information most relevant to them. The Introduction Want to see sample essays? Check out our Sample Essay section where you can see scholarship essays, admissions essays, and more! The principle purpose of the introduction is to present your position (this is also known as the thesis or argument ) on the issue at hand but effective introductory paragraphs are so much more than that. Before you even get to this thesis statement, for example, the essay should begin with a hook that grabs the reader’s attention and makes them want to read on. Examples of effective hooks include relevant quotations ( no man is an island ) or surprising statistics ( three out of four doctors report that ). Only then, with the reader’s attention hooked, should you move on to the thesis. The thesis should be a clear, one-sentence explanation of your position that leaves no doubt in the reader’s mind.