Strategies for Timed Writing

This article is designed for teachers who give timed writings, but it can be very helpful for students as well. Understanding the intentions that your teacher has and the purpose of timed writings will make you more confident and successful during timed exams.

Writing in the Digital World

Lang-8 is a very large online community for language exchange. On this website you can submit writing or grammar questions for review, and you usually receive a very quick response from the community. Become an active member of the website and you will have the opportunity to improve your writing skills, and help other people trying to learn your native language.

Writing.com is an online community of writers at every level. After you sign up for your FREE account, you can read others' submissions, enter writing contests, and get feedback on your writing.

At the Orange Education Center, the students have posted their paragraphs for others to see! The site also offers grammar exercises and writing topics that you can use for extra practice outside of class. You can review other students' paragraphs before you begin to write, which can help you with developing your ideas. You can also think about areas where these students might be able to improve and use that to help your own writing too! Check out Orange Education Center's Student Blog for a chance to see other students' writing, and leave them a comment about what you think!

Grammar Sites

Podcast/ Video

1. Check out Grammar Girl for help with grammar topics, writing topics, almost anything having to do with English, really! Grammar Girl offers advice in written and/or auditory forms via podcasts. Check it out!
2. Education Portal is in the process of creating FREE "fun & engaging lessons taught by world-class educators" on a wide variety of subjects. This is the link to the videos about composition, including essay writing and revising.

Information and Activities

1. One of our brilliant IAs, Krystle, has created this website to help students with their grammar and writing. The website includes both suggestions and strategies to help students write more persuasively and confidently. It's a great resource to explore!
2. The Owl is a very popular site that helps students improve their writing and grammar skills. This site has a lot of information, but few exercises.
3. EFLnet offers grammar, vocabulary, listening, and reading activities.
4. Englisch-hilfen is actually a German website, but it provides a bunch of great grammar activities.
5. The Guide to Grammar and Writing includes word/sentence activities as well as paragraph and essay information and tips.
6. This website allows you to choose grammar and punctuation topics to test yourself on.
7. Visit Dr. Grammar to quickly find an answer to all kinds of grammar questions or submit a question to the doctor!

Asking and Answering Yes/No Questions
In English, we use the auxiliary verbs "do," "be," and "have" as well as modals (can, could, should, will, would, may, might) to ask yes/no questions. These articles give a good overview of how to do this. The first article looks at all types of yes/no questions and the second looks at yes/no questions with "do" and "be" in the present tense.

Tense
This article explains the purpose of the simple present tense and the present continuous tense so that students can understand how to correctly use each one.

Articles
Check out this YouTube video that I created to help ESOL students use articles!
Article Information
Professor Manasse