Differences & Similarities in Technology
in 1950 and 2009

According to you, the 5 most useful activities are:

1.      going over common errors

2.      answering WH-questions

3.      reading someone else’s composition

4.      sequencing and paragraphing, and

5.      re-reading and checking your own work.

What can be learnt from this:

The activities in red can be done by yourselves without the help of anyone, so remember to do them, not just in exams but everytime you write – they’ll greatly improve the quality of your writing.

We then went over and corrected all of them together as a class.

Next, I gave you back your drafts so you could read them again and make changes. I asked all of you to focus on the verbs first when you check your writing (making sure there is a verb and that it’s in the correct tense and agrees with the subject). I then asked you to check your spelling.

To end the writing lesson, I asked you to fill out a questionnaire so I’ll know which of the many activities we have done were the most useful for you. When I have looked at all the data, I’ll upload the results here for you to see.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this series of writing lessons.

As usual, the photos were able to wake all of you up and get you excited.

Instead of going straight to writing though, I asked you to do group discussions first. The reason behind this is to help you get more ideas, so you would have more to write about later. Did this speaking activity help you with your writing task?

I then gave you the beginning of a sentence to help you start writing.

 This sentence was used as the starting point, because it is the most important sentence of the reply letter – the only reason you’re writing is to let your ex-classmate know whether or not you accept his / her invitation.

The next few steps were the same as last time and should be used again next time:

1)      Jotting down all the ideas you’ve come up with by answering wh-questions (who, what, when, where, why and how).

2)      Sequencing you ideas so you’ll know which idea to write about first, which idea to write about second, and so on.

3)      Paragraphing and deciding which ideas should be grouped together.          

Finally, we re-looked at the format of a formal letter and looked at the format of an email.

I then gave you a little over 30 minutes to finish your drafts.

Was today’s lesson useful?
Are you becoming a more confident writer of English?
Please leave a comment and share your thoughts with me.

1) asked you to write (for homework) in your weekly journal as if you were a 33 year old professional - this is to help you get into character and help you get used to writing as the future you.

2) given you the letter that your partner wrote and asked you to focus on your thoughts and feelings as you read it – this is to help you come up with  ideas for your reply letter.

3)  asked you to write (in today’s lesson)  a diary entry as the 33 year old professional (again) on your feelings about receiving this letter and your decision about whether or not to accept the invitation – this again is to let you practise writing as the future you, and to help you come up with more ideas for your reply letter. I also told you this diary entry will not be marked and asked you to focus more on your thoughts, feelings and ideas than on spelling and grammar – this is to allow you to write more freely so your train of ideas are not interrupted by language problems.     

I’ve just read the diary entries you wrote in class today and some of you have done really well - you have used your imaginations to put yourselves in the situation so your diary entries are ‘realistic’. I think these students will also do a good job tomorrow when they write their reply letters.

Remember, conditional sentences are just like complex sentences with if or when as the conjunction.

The verbs in the conditional part has to be in present simple, but the verbs in the result part can be in:
- present simple (if the result is a fact that has a 100% chance of happening), or
- future simple (if the result is a possibility that may or may not happen).

Finally, remember that a conjunction joins sentences together, so if the if or the when is at the beginning of the sentence, you need a comma to do its job instead.
e.g.:
Water freezes when it reaches zero degrees.
When water reaches zero degrees, it freezes. 

You guys were mostly awake when I was explaining this to you today, and were even excited when you had to make your own conditional sentences. However, a lot of you started to fall asleep when we started doing the exercises in the book. Why did this happen? Was it because you were tired from the previous activities? Was it because the exercises in the book were boring? Or were there other reasons?

Please tell me, I really want to know how to stop you from falling asleep in class.

After introducing the basics of a standard TSA group discussion (3 students, 3 minutes for preparation, 3 minutes for discussion), I told you about the marking scheme (Task completion 0-4; Strategies 0-2) and what is meant by strategies (eye-contact, turn-taking, interaction).  

I then gave you a topic that we all care about very much (Should Mr Ho set Listening Exercises as homework?) and allowed you 3 minutes to prepare for the discussion.

It turned out 3 minutes weren’t enough, so I ended up giving you 6 minutes instead since it was only your first practice (remember though that you only get 3 minutes in the exam).

We then picked 3 students to do a demonstration using a very fair method – lucky draw:

This PowerPoint took me some time to prepare, but I can easily use it again next time, and it is a fair way to pick students so I think it was worth it.

Several groups were picked this way to demonstrate to the class, and most of you understood how to do a Group Discussion by the end of the lesson (I hope).

The only thing I wasn’t happy about was that not everyone had a turn, so tomorrow, we’ll do this again together, as a class, in small groups, at the same time.

Please let me know if this oral lesson was useful to you and feel free to tell me what you liked / dislike about it.

To help you reduce the number of mistakes in your composition, I pointed out several common mistakes found in some of your work so you can all pay more attention to those areas as you write.   

I also reminded you to check if you have missed any important pieces of information in your letter, and suggested a few ways for you to ask for a reply because some of you had trobule wording it.

After giving you time (30 minutes) to write out the body of your invitation letter, we looked at other elements required in a formal letter (name of sender, date, signature, etc.), and discussed where they should be  positioned in the letter.

Once you have finished writing, I then asked you to check your work again and again: 1st to see if your ideas flowed and were logical, 2nd to see if your sentences were properly constructed (subject + verb +  detail), 3rd to see if your verbs agreed with your subjects (e.g. I love, he loves), 4th to see if you were using singulars and plurals correctly, 5th to see if you were using articles correctly, and finally to see if you were spelling words correctly. The reason I asked you to focus only on 1 problem at a time is to make checking your work easier. 

Well, I hope I have made writing compositions easier for you over the last 3 double lessons. If there was anything you liked / disliked / found useful / wanted to do but were not done in the lessons, please let me know by writing in your journal or by leaving a comment.

Have a wonderful Christmas and I’ll see you all again in 2009!

After giving you back your dictation, we looked at a few pictures:

The reason I showed you pictures of your classmates doing their future jobs is to remind you who you’re writing to – knowing your audience is very important if you want to write well.

We then went over basic and complex sentence structures:

I feel that this is important and can help some of you communicate your ideas clearly.

We also looked at the importance of logical ideas and how even grammatically correct sentences can still be bad sentences.

I then asked you to answer some wh- questions (who, what, when, where, why and how) – this is a trick to help you think of ideas and is useful not only in writing but also in preparing for oral presentations.   

Next came sequencing - ordering your sentences and deciding which should come 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc. in your composition, and paragraphing - deciding which sentences can be grouped together to form paragraphs.

I then wanted you to start writing your compositions, but we ran out of time and had to stop. Tomorrow, you’ll get to finish your compositions before we do something really fun! 

I was hoping that by showing you videos of Stephen Hawking, Bill Gates and Jacky Chan, you will be more interested in the topic and better understand what a guest speaker is.

I was hoping that by doing an example with Vincent,

you will pay more attention to what’s happening and have a clearer idea of what you need to do.

I was hoping that by asking you to pick a real classmate’s name and their future job, the task of writing an invitation letter will be more attractive and less boring than ones that start with ”You are Chris Wong. Write a letter to …” 

I was hoping that by taking you through the writing process step-by-step, you will be able to see and experience what it’s like to write for a purpose and eventually become a more confident writer of English .

I was hoping that by the end of the lesson, everyone would be happy because they would have had some fun and would have become a little bit more comfortable with English composition.

However, by the end of today’s lesson, I was not happy.

I was not happy because some students were extremely unhappy about who they had to write to (but I couldn’t allow changes because it would be unfair for other students). I was also unhappy because some students were still uninterested and looked bored when I asked them to write (although I had tried my best to make writing easier and more interesting).

Did any of you find today’s lesson useful?

Whatever your answer is, I will not give up! I will keep trying until all of you enjoy learning English! And in case some of you are wondering, I am not angry with you ok?