It’s no secret formula to great writing. In fact, it’s been around for exactly 2009 years. Which means, back in 1 B.C., someone came up with this wonderful simple rule. And how do I know of it? Why, Wikipedia of course!

This quintessential simple rule to rocking writing has been drilled into every journalist living or dead, me included. It’s what makes for great news stories, shocking yellow journalism, and even the racy Shobhaa De columns. But, why would this rule so journalistic be applicable in the ESL world?

Because it works! Every friggin’ time.. Try it teaching letter writing, or paragraph writing, or essay writing, or note writing, or email writing (for all those fancy, big-buck business ESL teachers).

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1 Comment | In: Mimetic Musings | tags: 5 Ws and 1 H, essay writing, good writing, letter writing, note writing, paragraph writing, writing tip, writing well. | #

This was among the last of the lessons I presented during the month-long CELTA course. I was the first in my group to teach a writing lesson, so I had had no exposure to these before. And the tutors did an input session on writing lessons the morning of, so my afternoon class could not have benefited much from it

Yet, this was also among the best lessons I presented, if I may say so. I think this was primarily because I relied on my own common sense (rather than resorting to looking for sample plans.. ) and my experience as a journalist in outlining the basic rules of succint writing. At the very least, the attached lesson plan is a good guide to teaching letter writing.

I decided to teach cover letter writing to my group of upper intermediate ESL students because a lot of them had told me they would soon be applying for jobs. Once I started analyzing the form of the cover letter, I found that it could easily be divided into the same categories as any decent journalistic report/story – who, what, why, where, when, how.

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1 Comment | In: ESL Lesson Plans | tags: CELTA, cover letter, ESL Lesson Plans, esl students, esl writing, intermediate esl, lesson plan, letter writing, writing cover letters, writing lesson handouts. | #