| Lesson 1 This lesson has six parts. You need to do all six parts. Don't worry about doing everything perfectly. The purpose of this lesson is for me to get to know you better and for both of us to know your strength and weaknesses in English writing. In order to get better at something, we have to know what to improve! Send me your work from this lesson in an email. Part 1 - GETTING TO KNOW YOU 1. What is your home language? What country did you grow up in? 2. Are you familiar with the grammar of your home language? How about English? If you don't know words like noun, clause, verb, etc. please let me know. 3. How have you learned English up to now? (For example, from tv, music, classes at the Adult School, classes in your home country, etc.) 4. Are you taking any other classes at the Adult School right now? If so, what classes? 5. What is easy for you to write? What is hard? 6. How do you feel about writing in your home language? 7. Do you have to do any English writing right now? For example, for your job, for your child's school, etc. 8. What do you want to know about writing when you finish this class? Part 2 - JOURNAL Let's start with explaining what a journal is. The "journal" comes from the French word "jour" which means "day." The traditional journal is small book in which you write something every day. You can write about events, people, places, feelings, facts, or anything else that interests you. In this class, we use the journal as a place to practice writing, to build self-confidence, to develop our writing muscles, to get used to expressing our ideas and feelings in English, and to take a break from worry about grammar, spelling and other horrible English problems. Scientists have done many studies and they have found out that worrying does not make you smarter. In fact, it makes you kind of dumber. Being relaxed and feeling confident helps a lot. This is why we do the journal. I want you to feel relaxed when you write in English. Practice improves everything. Whether it is ice skating, getting along with your family, business, or speaking English, you will do it better if you practice at it. You will do even better if you practice consciously. What does "consciously" mean? It means to be aware of what you are doing. To watch yourself and think about what you are doing and learn from your mistakes. So do you have to think about everything while you write? No, not all the time. Do you have to think about things when you write the journal part of the lesson? No. So why do you have to do a journal section? Because when you write and write and write and stop worrying about things, you start to notice things and think about things without trying to. It happens naturally. If you keep a personal journal, you notice and think about many things. I recommend it. You don't have to keep a personal journal for this class but you do have to do the journal part of each lesson. I will give you a topic and you will write about it - without stopping! - for ten minutes. Right now, write about what you like to do - without stopping! - for ten minutes. Send me what you write in an email. Don't worry. I am not going to correct this. If you want to read an example of a journal you can click on JOURNAL SAMPLE. This lesson is NOT FINISHED. You have done two parts and you need to do FOUR MORE. Click on this button to get to the next parts. Thank you! |
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