Basic word-, sentence-, and paragraph-level writing activities that are easily extended into conversation activities. These exercises emphasize output, active vocabulary and student-centered learning.

1. EFL Writing in the
Conversation Classroom
Presented by:
Douglas Baumwoll
Jeollanamdo Educational Training Institute

2. Download Files
• SlideShare
– Go to SlideShare.net, search “diegofresco”
– Register (easy) to download (not to view)
• email: douglas.baumwoll@yahoo.com
• Trello
– Must register (very fast and easy)
– trello.com/b/hNsWyDmi/doug-s-writing-course

4. Preliminaries:
Where Are You at? (3 minutes)
• Where do you teach? Class size? Grade?
• Do you have a native teacher? Writing?
• Do you teach any writing?
• What writing tasks do you ask of your Ss?
• Do your students do writing homework?
• Do your students keep a writing notebook?

5. Teaching Experience in Korea

6. Teacher Trainer, Jeollanamdo Province

7. What Middle- and High-School Public
School Teachers Teach (in order):
• Reading
• Vocabulary
• Grammar
• Listening
• Speaking
• Pronunciation
• Writing – 0%

9. 수능
(CSAT, KSAT)

10. Discuss with your students:
• Why learn English? Why learn L2?
• Intrinsic and extrinsic motivations
–It can raise your grades in other subjects
• Organized thinking (writing!)
• Creative Thinking (writing!)
• Critical Thinking (writing!)
• Self expression (writing!)
• Express thoughts more clearly = articulate
(명학한)

11. Cosmopolitanism:
free from local, provincial, or national ideas, prejudices,
or attachments; at home all over the world.

12. International Problem Solving

14. On Wikipedia:
- 5,000,000 articles written in English
- 300,000 articles written in Korean

15. Why write?
11. Become more thoughtful readers

16. The Levels of Writing

17. Word-level Writing

18. Free Rice.com

19. Brainstorm – Cluster Diagram

20. What’sthe Claim Category?
1. The Main Idea: __________________________________________________________
Pizza Hot Dogs Hamburgers ____________
2. The Main Idea: __________________________________________________________
Soccer Basketball Tennis ____________
3. The Main Idea: __________________________________________________________
Go to the park Sleep Read a book ____________
4. The Main Idea: __________________________________________________________
Pray Confess Learn about God ____________
5. The Main Idea: __________________________________________________________
Honesty Responsibility Respect ____________
6. The Main Idea: __________________________________________________________
Ferrari Corvette Porsche ____________
7. The Main Idea: __________________________________________________________
Teacher Engineer Architect ____________
8. The Main Idea: __________________________________________________________
Moons Planets Star ____________
9. The Main Idea: Teachers do many things at school.
_____________________ ____________________ ____________________
10. The Main Idea: Having an education is important for many reasons.
_____________________ ____________________ ____________________
11. The Main Idea: You can do different activities on a computer.
_____________________ ____________________ ____________________

21. Hello, Goodbye Game
• Hello _________ , goodbye ________ .
• Hello homework, goodbye Star Craft.
• Hello diet, goodbye ice cream.
• Hello summer vacation, goodbye school.

22. vs.
Vocabulary
Is filling in the blank from a word list or word
bank using active vocabulary?

23. Active Vocabulary Activity
Student Output = Word Production
Instructional language (use gestures):
1) I will show you a photo.
2) You will look at it.
3) In your notebooks, you will write any words that
you think of.
4) You have one minute.
5) Have fun!
CCQ: What will you look at? What will you write? How
much time do you have?
Ready…

24. trees
walk

25. Words I Think of in One Minute
…water, stream, swim, waterfall, enjoy, red,
green, clothes, T-shirt, plants, trees, forest,
leaves, hike, walk, weekend, fit, hiking,
friends, talk, relax, stress, people, warm,
clean, sunny, nature, beautiful, peaceful,
exercise, healthy, animals, global warming,
Amazon, happy, healthy…

26. What have we achieved?
• Active language production
• Student-generated vocabulary
– Ss feel involved, empowered
• Do follow-up speaking or writing activities.
Write sentences or a story using 10 of the words.
Write opposites, synonyms
Write short, S+V+O sentences
Label nouns, verbs, adjectives

27. Use Topics Relevant to Your Students

29. Write with “most used” English Words
Top 100 Verbs
100 Common Speaking Adjectives
Top Academic Words
More Academic Words

30. 100 Most Common Nouns
1. time
2. year
3. people
4. way
5. day
6. man
7. thing
8. woman
9. life
10. child
11. world
12. school
13. state
14. family
15. student
16. group
17. country
18. problem
19. hand
20. part
21. place
22. case
23. week
24. company
25. system
26. program
27. question
28. work
29. government
30. number
31. night
32. point
33. home
34. water
35. room
36. mother
37. area
38. money
39. story
40. fact
41. month
42. lot
43. right
44. study
46. eye
47. job
48. word
49. business
50. issue
51. side
52. kind
53. head
54. house
55. service
56. friend
57. father
58. power
59. hour
60. game
61. line
62. end
63. member
64. law
65. car
66. city
67. community
68. name
69. president
70. team
71. minute
72. idea
73. kid
74. body
75. information
76. back
77. parent
78. face
79. others
80. level
81. office
82. door
83. health
84. person
85. art
86. war
87. history
88. party
89. result
91. morning
92. reason
93. research
94. girl
95. guy
96. moment
97. air
98. teacher
99. force
100. education

31. Parts of Speech, word order &
Writing

33. So, can you and your partner
write the 8 parts of speech?

34. Sentence Building & Word Order
(by shape and color)

35. Sentence Building Sites
• Parts of speech – online games
• Octopus Game - arcademics.com
• Asteroids Game - abcya.com
• Google Sites - easygrammar4kids

36. More Sentence Building Sites
• Balloon Game - primarygames.com
• worksheetgenius.com - Sentence
building with teacher input!

37. pro-
noun
noun
adjective
adverbC
article
Punctu-
ation
verb
conjunctionPreposi-
tion
1.
2.
3.
Verbs: watch, hear, sing, eat,
sell, buy, give, take, bring,
meet, read, carry, find, see,
write, clean, have, play, pull

38. Sentence Build
• The man walked down the road.
• The old man walked down the narrow road.
• The poor old man walked spritely down the
narrow country road.
• The poor old man walked spritely down the
narrow country road in the evening.

39. Sentence-Level Writing

40. • Kim Yu-na is Korean.
• She is a figure skater.
• She is very talented.
Kim Yu-na, the Korean figure
skater, is very talented.
Kim Yu-na is a very talented
Korean figure skater.
The very talented figure skater
Kim Yu-na is Korean.

41. Paragraph Writing

43. Elicited Words for Free Paragraph
• Elicit from your students:
– 2 nouns
– 2 adjectives
– 2 verbs
– 2 adverbs
– 2 conjunctions
– (add 2 interjections)
• Ss write a 10-15 sentence paragraph using all
words.
– Ss underline each word used in red

44. The tired man looked out over the
stormy ocean and saw a large
sailboat in the distance. He
blinked his eyes twice but couldn’t
know what was happening. At that
moment, a thin fisherman
screamed at him with shaking
hands, “Help them!” The boat had
hit a rock under the water, and
there were ten people trying to get
off. He had to find out how to help
them quickly and get safety. He
shouted to them, “Just jump!”
because the boat was sinking very
fast.

45. Circle Writing
• Ss work in groups of 3 or 4
• Each student writes a sentence, trying to make a
sentence that is a good beginning to a story
• Ss pass their paper to the right
• Ss now add a 2nd sentence to the paper in front of
them. They may change the tone/genre of the story.
Ss pass the paper to the right.
• Ss right the 3rd sentence on the paper in front of them.
• Etc., until the number of total sentences is reached
(4, 6 or 8 is a good number)
– The S writing the final sentence (4th , 6th or 8th) must end
the story in that sentence

46. I would like to travel to
______ for three reasons.
Park Ji Sung is great for
three reasons.
I have three favorite Korean
foods.
I love English class for three
reasons.
???

47. Read Your Way to a Better Life
Reading is important for kids for three reasons. First,
reading informs them about the world and far-away
places without them leaving their home. For example,
a child can learn about food in Korea or art in India by
reading a book. Next, reading helps a child develop his
imagination. When I read “The Lord of the Rings” I
imagined what the landscape looked like and what the
characters looked like, especially the dragon! Finally,
reading allows people to feel and understand their
emotions. When a character feels pain or joy I can also
feel it, which helps me to understand my own
emotions better. In my opinion, reading clearly helps
kids to develop important cognitive skills and learn
wonderful information about the world we live in.

48. Plot Graph for Story or Movie

49. Writing Questions
• ITESLJ.org - Written Conversation Questions

50. Use Realia

53. but wait…now it’s your turn to write!