Free Writing



I’m not really a good writer, especially when it comes to creative writing, so it’s no surprise that I hated the lessons in which we had to come up with and write a story or something similar. Free writing is a method that can help your students deal with similar feelings and practice creative writing. 

Students are asked to write about something for 5 minutes without break, without thinking about the process, no grammar awareness is needed and it is not graded. They choose whether they are ready to share the written with the others after the 5 minutes have passed. 




So the rules are:
  1. you continue your writing before the time is up
  2. you do not evaluate the quality of the text itself, but just the ideas
  3. you ignore the spelling rules
  4. after 5 minutes give them one more minute to finish, because good ideas come under pressure
At first it might be difficult to write about anything, so you could give them a topic, as simple as “a chair” or “a window”. But avoid doing it if you can because the purpose of free writing is to write about the first thing that comes to your mind, even if it’s: “I have no idea what to write about. What a stupid activity, I wish I could be in my bed now, sleeping...”

Try doing this activity as often as possible, so that your students get into routine of writing. And have fun, of course!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Hints on Pronunciation for Foreigners

Image
Pronunciation is one of those things in language teaching that can very often be neglected. Or at least that’s the case here, in Croatia. Along with tongue twisters , you can make your students aware of how complex, important and interesting pronunciation is by showing them some really fun stuff on the internet.
Read more

Simulations and Role-Plays

Image
Simulations and role-plays are very useful for speaking activities, where the emphasis is on fluency and not so much on accuracy. They can be fun and your students could really grow to like them if you adapt them to their age and level of knowledge. Firstly, let's refresh our knowledge of the difference between simulations and role-plays. When it comes to simulation students speak and react as themselves, but the group role, situation and task is imaginary. In role-plays, on the other hand, students are given a situation plus problem or task, but they are also allotted individual roles, so they are not acting as themselves, but as though they are someone else. The most important thing for both is that students imagine themselves in a situation outside the classroom and use language appropriate to this new context. You can give your students a variety of roles (profession, status, personality, attitude, mood), variety of physical settings, variety of communicative functi
Read more

Fortune Teller

Image
If you want to spice up your classes when it comes to teaching and practicing tenses, try this idea for practicing future tenses or use it as an inspiration for something else.  I really enjoyed playing with the fortune teller origami as a kid, but even now, 15 years later, it's still really amusing. I tried out this method in one of my classes and it worked great, so I hope you'll have fun with it as much as I and my colleagues did. This activity will help your students practice the Future Simple tense. They should work in pairs and tell the future to one another. They will use the fortune teller origami that you can make for them, but the better option would be to let them make it. Here is how you make a fortune teller origami: After you have folded the paper in the right way, you should write certain things inside of the fortune teller origami. I would suggest writing some names of the cities, people, cars, brands, colors etc. In the middle part of the
Read more