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I will begin teaching essay writing to Korean teenagers starting this Saturday. The aim of these kids is to get good scores on the SAT to get into good American colleges.

Does anyone have any ideas or tips for teaching essay writing to non-native speakers of English?

I must admit that I do not know their speaking abilities. I know that they range in age from 14-18.

My boss gave me a book and a reading group guide to assist me. The title of the book is The Five People You Meet in Heaven

Any ideas are welcome :D

You don't say how good their English is, so I will put it on the same level as Japanese teens I have taught.

You also didn't say anything about how often you are supposed to teach them, or how many lessons you have until the exam.

For the preparation they need, you should teach them how to form proper paragraphs (topic sentence and support sentences), which means brainstorming topics and then going to outlines before actually writing. See how well they do this in long periods, then shorten them up, because they may not have time during an SAT!

Teach them structures to use to compare things. Not just X is bigger than Y. Contrast, too.

Teach them how to interpret graphs and to describe the data.

Teach them how to use time markers (simple ones like first, second, third, and more complex ones like "when I was 2 years old", "in the days before 911", and so on).

Teach them how to use cause and effect to describe things. Sometimes cause is written first in a sentence, but sometimes it is written last, so the verbs are different. X causes Y, vs. Y is caused by X.

Push them for writing fast, but only 50 words at first, then 150, then 250. If they are anything like Japanese teens, they will have horrible grammar, but even more horrible organizational skills.

Actually teaching writing is not easy job. My Master's degree was about how to teach composition writing for middle school students.

First, You should teach your students the parts of the paragraph (topic stentence, details, and ending sentence).

After that you can ask them to stretch their writing to an essay by considering this paragraph as an introduction for their essays.

You can use the Process Approach to teach them to write easily. This approach is very suitable for your students.

It consists of 5 steps:

1. Pre -writing: in this step you can use many activities to check their background about the topic they are going to write about. These activities like brainstorming, mapping, listing, free writing ... etc.

2. Drafting: in this step, students collect their ideas and write the first dafrt of their essay.

3. Revising: in this step, students read their drafts and check the ideas or the content of their writing; just the ideas not grammatical rules.

4. Editing: students in this stage read their drafts and check any grammatical rules, punctuation problems or spelling mistakes.

5.Publishing: in this stage, you will find your students ready to read their essay to the whole class, or publish it in any way.

It is a very fruitful approach for students either high or low achiever students.

I hope it will be suitable for your students too.
Good Luck.

Thanks a lot foe this!

Glenski wrote: ↑30 Aug 2007, 06:40 You don't say how good their English is, so I will put it on the same level as Japanese teens I have taught.

You also didn't say anything about how often you are supposed to teach them, or how many lessons you have until the exam.

For the preparation they need, you should teach them how to form proper paragraphs (topic sentence and support sentences), which means brainstorming topics and then going to outlines before actually writing. See how well they do this in long periods, then shorten them up, because they may not have time during an SAT!

Teach them structures to use to compare things. Not just X is bigger than Y. Contrast, too.

Teach them how to interpret graphs and to describe the data.

Teach them how to use time markers (simple ones like first, second, third, and more complex ones like "when I was 2 years old", "in the days before 911", and so on).

Teach them how to use cause and effect to describe things. Sometimes cause is written first in a sentence, but sometimes it is written last, so the verbs are different. X causes Y, vs. Y is caused by X.

Push them for writing fast, but only 50 words at first, then 150, then 250. If they are anything like Japanese teens, they will have horrible grammar, but even more horrible organizational skills.

Interesting to know that. Perhaps, I may get to teach essay writing to teens in the future!

Oh, writing good essays is not that easy, and teaching it to foreign students is even harder. I think that, first of all, it's a good idea to start with theory. There are differences in essay types, and an explanation for each is needed. There are different good resources online, not only books, but it will take some time to look through them and to choose something which will be the best.

Then for sure there should be practice, a lot of practice. You can start from something simple, maybe even provide additional resources and examples so that it will be easier to understand the task.

I am working on my skills, too, and now I am looking for some resources which can help me. From time to time, I also use the help of EduBirdie because if there is a deadline, and I can't finish writing myself, then the best option is to get professional help. It helps me a lot and saves time, which I can dedicate to other tasks. When I have free time, I practice to improve my skills.

Indeed, writing good essays is not that easy. It needs lots of practice. It needs a good introduction and a good conclusion to sum one’s conclusion. One needs to be also knowledgeable on the essay topic that one choose to write about.
I have not written an essay for ages and I think I need to practice writing more essays in order to help my future students to do well in their essay writing.

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