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Topic: Composition

These resources relate to writing skills, including the composition of essays, persuasive pieces, and other types of texts.

Word frequency

What are the most frequently used words in English? And could we do without them?

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Word frequency: Activity

The 10 most common English words are:

the

of

and

a

in

to

it

is/was

I

for

Can you answer the following questions without using these 10 words?

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Word salads (primary)

In this lesson, students arrange words on the smart board in order to create acceptable sentences.

Goals

  • Use implicit grammatical knowledge to arrange word tiles on a smart board into sentences.

Lesson Plan

The teacher explains that today, we will arrange words to make sentences. All of the example sentences here have been drawn from our corpus.

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Word salads (primary): Commands activity

Look
what
I
found
.

Enjoy
the
show
.

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Word salads (primary): Questions activity

Have
you
seen
her
?

Can
you
tell
me
?

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Word salads (primary): Statement activity

He
talked
to
people
.

I
saw
him
in
London
.

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Writing a story with prepositions

Applying knowledge of prepositions to a short story

This lesson looks at how you might use your knowledge of prepositions and preposition phrases to write a short story aimed at children.

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Writing an advertisement with adjectives

In this activity, you will write a brief entry advertisement that describes a product and makes it sound as attractive as possible.

Goals

  • Identify the adjectives in an online advertisement.
  • Write an original advertisement using an array of descriptive and effective adjectives.

Lesson Plan

The teacher explains that today, we will write Ebay advertisements to sell products. To make your item sound attractive you will need to describe it in detail, using a range of adjectives. 

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Writing an advertisement with adjectives: Activity

Fairydolls Toy Peapod Family

Approximate heights 16cm, 12cm and 8cm.

These little figures have a dense staple polyester filling. All felt used here is a good-quality wool blend. Heads are natural beechwood beads.

Suitable for gentle play or lovely Christmas stocking fillers.

All natural materials. Original hand-crafted items.

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Writing with tense and aspect

This lesson asks students to apply their understanding of tense, aspect, and time to structure passages of writing.

Goals

  • Arrange sentences in order based on tense and aspect in the sentences.
  • Practise ordering and re-ordering sentences in various ways using tense and aspect to convey the appropriate order of events.

Lesson Plan

The teacher explains that today, we will arrange a passage of writing and explore expressions of time in English.

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Writing with tense and aspect: Activity 2

Here is the outline sequence of events (don’t forget that you can add more):

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Prepared speech

Using corpora to investigate prepared speeches

One very simple approach to using corpora in English lessons is to pull apart a speech using the programme Wordle, which can be found here. Wordle creates simple but beautiful images made up of words in a text that you can input.

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Adjectives: Avoiding adjective overuse

Many writers of fiction use adjectives as a quick way of telling us what a character is like: how they appear, how they feel, how we should view them. Look at the following examples of how adjectives are used to provide a basic description:

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Adverbs: Avoiding adverb overuse

Adverbs are quite a varied class of words, which work in several different ways in sentences. Think of examples like obviously, afterwards, extremely, gently. These show that adverbs can express many different kinds of meaning.

This makes adverbs a useful word class. However, many experienced writers advise us to avoid overusing adverbs, and instead find other ways of describing actions and events.

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Cohesion

Cohesion refers to the grammatical relationships that exist within a text between words, phrases, etc. When we talk only of the semantic links, i.e. the meaning links, we speak of coherence.

Here we focus on cohesion. However, before we do so, consider the following passage:

The sun is shining. Who is your neighbour? I left the washing in the machine. Without doubt she will succeed.

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Discourse structure

Speakers and writers often use a range of structures and devices to signpost their arguments. These signposts link what they are saying to what they have said before, and to what they are going to say.

Discourse structure is a term used to describe the way in which an entire text is organised – for example, how language is used in a poem, in a newspaper article, or in a speech designed to read aloud.

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English Grammar Day 2016

'Grammar is cool, and it is cool to know your grammar'.

A video about the Third English Grammar Day held at the British Library in 2016.

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Englicious contains many resources for English language in schools, but the vast majority of them require you to register and log in first. For more information, see What is Englicious?

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