The teaching of writing, and the teaching of developmental and ESL/EFL writing in particular, has historically given priority to the sentence, often in theory and almost always in practice. The writing approach modeled here simply argues that the paragraph should be given primacy of place in ESL/EFL academic writing instruction. The…

Although many fields of study are increasingly promoting awareness of the need to protect the ecosystem by thinking and acting "green," the concept of environmental education actually has a long history; for example, concerns about global environmental problems were discussed at a 1972 United Nations Conference (Nkwetisama 2011), which…

Using dialogue journals gives English language learners valuable writing practice. This article explores topics such as audience, fluency, teacher-student relationships, empowerment, and making the connection to academic writing. And the author gives practical advice on how teachers can institute dialogue journals in their classrooms and how best…

Much has been written about strategies for writing effective academic articles. For an excellent overview of issues to consider when publishing an academic article, the authors recommend Malcolm Benson's article in the April 1994 "Forum". Much less has been written about how a focus on the overall structure of the paper can help the reader and…

Mindful of the fact that one of the most important ingredients in learning to write in a foreign language is motivation, the authors have experimented in their classes with a wide range of exercises from a very useful source: Gianni Rodari's "Grammatico della Fantasia: lntroduzione all'arte di inventare storie" (Torino: Piccola Biblioteca Einandi,…

In this article the author discusses a new approach to teaching referencing based on establishing textual authority and separating writers' voices. She first presents a short discussion of key theoretical ideas that inform the approach, and then she describes five lessons, four of which are integrated into the course theme of "homelessness."…

The challenges of teaching writing and encouraging students to write are many. However, one of the most difficult issues to deal with is students' reluctance to write in any language, even their home language. Because of this reluctance, being asked to write in English as a foreign or second language can feel like a double burden. Learners of…

As students move from writing personal essays to writing formal academic texts in English, they face several new challenges. Writing tasks in higher education often require students to draw upon outside sources and to adopt the styles and genres of academic discourse. They must conduct research, summarize and paraphrase, cite sources, adopt genre…

Many educators know that studying and composing literature and poetry helps English learners develop their own voice and sense of audience, and to express important social ideas in the process. Poetry, in particular, offers special challenges, but one type of poem that is manageable for the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classroom is "haiku,"…

According to Martin (2000), English-language instructors should be careful about monopolizing a class with too much teacher-talk--for speaking and writing activities, more than 15 percent of the time is probably excessive. Teacher-centered lessons featuring lectures on sentence structure and how to write effective paragraphs are bound to create…