How to teach Writing an Essay
Tips of Essay/Paragraph Correction essays and paragraphs is a major and an important skill. There are several rules we must pay attention to while proofreading the essays.
1. The teacher should encourage the student to write essays in blue or black ink
instead of pencils. This way, you can more easily find the errors in the essays.
It is also better for you to correct essays in red ink. To show your profession,
you should never use pencils to correct them.
2. While correcting the essays, you should keep the mistakes. Please cross them
out rather than erasing them. They are very helpful for the student because only
then can he/she compare the corrected essay with the original one.
3. If a student makes serious and apparent mistakes in an essay, you may
underline them and have him/her correct them on his/her own. For
example, “SP” means spelling mistakes, “T” means tense errors.
Afterwards, you should check how the student did with the correction.
4. While correcting the essays, please make note of the mistakes of grammar and
word usage as well as correct the structure and content of the essay. Some
structural mistakes are: the content is unrelated to the topic; there are no thesis
statement, or general sentence in the essays; there are no topic sentence in the
body; the content of the body paragraph is not focused on the topic sentence, etc.
If you find poor structure or content, you should ask the student to correct or
re-write them. If necessary, you should write a sample to show your student.
Also the teacher can show students the model essay after correcting students’ essay, compare the model essay with students’ essay.
5. Sometimes there are awkward or “Chinese-translated” sentences in the essay,
you should change all or part of them in order to guide the students to write
better. For example,
A. Original sentence
We can find much examples about humors coming from successful men.
B. General correction
We can find many examples about humor coming from successful men.
C. Qualified correction
We can find many examples of successful men who also have a good sense of humor.
6. While correcting the essays, sometimes you may show two or more solutions
instead of one. That would guide the students to learn more writing skills.
7. You should correct the essays very carefully. Try not to miss any mistakes.
Try to correct the sentence seriously. Don’t be
easy-going. Even if the sentence is correct, you could change some words
or structure to make the sentence much better. This way can guide the
student to learn more. In general, at least 10 words per page must be
modified.
8. If your student makes content and structural mistakes, you should guide them to
write essay and paragraph general outlines. They would help them to organize
the structure.
9. There are several ways to tutor.
a. You could assign several useful sentence structure or conjunctions for the
student to use in their essays.
b. After correcting the essay, sometimes you could ask the students to re-write it
in the correct way, particularly the elementary students.
c. If you find grammar mistakes in the essays, you could teach the student
related grammar rules according to grammar books.
d. If you find spelling mistakes, you could test the student in the next session to
see if he/she has memorized the correct spellings.
10. You should always ask the student to write essays in double space; that way you
will have more space for correction. Also, encouraging them to keep the essays
in a binder is a good way to teach them organizational and filing skills.
11. After correcting the essays, you could indicate the key points and weaknesses
you found in short comments.
12. Please be aware of the different writing skill of each student. Grade 3 and
grade 4 students should write 150 words single or multi paragraphs. Grade 5 to
Grade 8 students should write 250 words essays. Students over grade 9 should
write 350-450 words essays. If the student has only stayed in Canada for less
than one year, his/her writing skill may be lower than the normal standard.
13. While correcting essays, you always use the three-grade higher- level way to
guide the students, which would encourage them to learn more. For example,
the student’s sentence “ British Columbia is a very good province because it
has very good view.” You must change one “good” to “beautiful” or
“ fantastic”.
14. There are three- levels for teaching essay writing.
a. The lower level: Only correct grammar and spelling roughly. Be not able to explain the grammar rules.
b. The middle level: Besides correcting grammar and spelling, the tutor can explain
the grammar rules and find the rules evidence for the student in grammar
books. The tutors can introduce more advanced or better sentences and words
even if the students sentences are correct. The students can learn more through this
way.
c. The advanced level: Besides the middle-level skills, the tutors can teach how to
write essay structure and a good- content essay. Sometimes, the tutors can write an
essay sample, comparing the students essay. Before assigning the essay topic, the
tutor can introduce the background about topic. For example, before assigning the
topic " The importance of Environment Protection", the tutor can assign the student to
read several non-fiction books about environments. The student will get more idea
to write a good-content essay.
14. It is strongly recommended that all tutors read the two books below. They are
very helpful for writing tutoring.
a. “Introduction to Academic Writing” (intermediate level)
by Ann Hogue, Longman
b. “Writing Academic English” (advanced level)
by Longman
15. Always ask the student to write down the essay topic and date while completing
the essay, encourage the student to keep those corrected essays forever ( file in
the binder). The student and tutor can trace the student’s writing progress and
weakness according to these essays.
16. While the tutor corrects the student’s essay, always asks the student to join. Don’t
let the student to sit beside you, nothing to do. They would feel bored. The
tutor can assign the student to read an article, make several sentences, do a
comprehension, do grammar exercise. Anyway, make them busy.
17. In most situations, ask the students to write expository essay because the essay
tests always focus on this type. Sometime ask the students to write narration,
description or about people. Make the essay writing more interesting.
18. Please always choose higher level essay topics (LPI/TOEFL/Provincial exam)
for the over grade 7 students.
19. Don’t spend whole session on correcting the essay. The students would feel
bored. 30 minutes are enough. Generally, ask the student to write 150-200 words
for homework after per session. For example, ask the student to write the 200
words essay body after the first session; 150 words introduction and conclusion
after the second session.
20. Encourage students to check the Thesaurus and use several advanced
unfamiliar words in their essays. They could underline these words.
21. The tutor’s obligation is not only teaching English, but also guide the
student a good learning aptitude and correct methods.