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Teach general email structure to students. Have students read example emails to practice noticing different parts of an email. Have students write emails.

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This is the last week of new content to help ESL students learn English writing.

Email Writing Research

1. This slideshow provides basic data about email messages.

2. Here is an email which I sent to many hotels in Korea. Some of the answers I received are here.

Dear Sir/Madame,

I'd like to get some information about rooms and availability at your hotel.

I have two adults and one teenager traveling to Seoul. They need a room for two nights
on May 26 and May 27.

1. Do you have rooms available on those nights?
2. What are the rates and taxes?
3. Do you have wheelchair access?
4. What is the best way to travel to your hotel from the airport?

Many thanks for your help and information.

Rob

PROFESSIONAL EMAIL WRITING

Writing an effective email in English is not difficult. But my students need to learn a few basic writing skills. This lesson will help them in the future, especially when they start looking for a job and need to write emails in English.

Intro

Just about every email - in the professional world - is about two things:

1. Giving information

2. Asking for something (a request)

Email is fast, which is good. But you have to write for people who read quickly as well. That means:

1. be clear (few mistakes)

2. be brief (not too wordy, no extra information).

In business, the tone of an email is very important. Tone means the feeling people get when they read your message. Emails should be polite. But unlike a business letter, an email does not usually have to be super polite. Also the style (or formatting) of the email message is important.

Email Structure

Here is a worksheet that outlines the basic structure of an email.

10 Rules for Writing Business E-Mails

1. Remember PAS. Purpose, action, salutation. The beginning should say the purpose; why you are writing. Next, the email should have clear action: are you giving information or asking for something? Finally, close the email with a polite way to say goodbye.

2. Be informal, but not too friendly. 'Hello Rob', or 'Hi Mr. Kim' are okay. Sometimes, people write emails that begin with a name, like "Steve". Never use emoticons.

3. Be concise. Business e-mails are short. Usually, 2 paragraphs are enough - few people read long emails.

4. Use the subject line well. Tell readers why they should open your email.

5. Remember grammar, word choice, punctuation and spelling.

6. People scan emails. If it is interesting, they might read it carefully. Many people receive 25 to 100 emails a day. They don't have time to read every email. Short sentences and short paragraphs are good.

7. Reference. If your email is a reply, say that. Something like this: "In your last email you asked ....." .

8. If your message has an attachment, add one sentence to say that.

9. Use white space. Usually, 2 lines per paragraph. This makes the message easy to scan and read.

10. Write with active sentences. Passive sentences use more words and take longer to read.

Writing Exercise

You task is to write an email message that sends an answer to a question with information.

Here is the email message with a question. You job is to answer the question by

1. comparing the two things

2. write a properly formatted email message

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ESL Writing Lesson: How to Write and Format an Email

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This is the last week of new content to help ESL students learn English writing. Email Writing Research This slideshow provides basic data about email messages. Here is an email which I sent to many hotels in Korea. Some of the answers I received are here.

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More on Level 1

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* See info on all levels.

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Business English Environment People, Entertainment & Gossip Technology

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Breaking News English - Simple English News

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Simple English, news, ideas, online activities and printable handouts that save you time - for news English and current events lessons.

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Today you are going to learn about 15 pre-reading activities that you can use to start your reading lessons with the right foot.

When reading is taught, teachers usually follow a framework to teach a lesson, that framework has three stages

The Warm-up and the 3 stages made up what it is known as the Stages of a Reading Lessons. The Pre-Reading section consists of activities and exercises to prepare students before they do the actual reading

Why are Pre-Reading Activities Important?

Pre reading activities play an important role in a reading lesson. Every reading lesson should start with activities to activate background knowledge and a series of activities to prepare student for the reading.

Pre-reading activities help students prepare for the reading activity by activating the relevant schemata, and motivating them to read.

Pre-reading activities can also help learners anticipate the topic, vocabulary and possibly important grammar structures in the texts.

What are some Pre-Reading Activities that You can Implement in the Classroom?

There are many pre-reading activities that you can do in the classroom. More than we can even think of

Creativity leads to the creation of more activities to suit needs and interest of a diversed community.

Here are some pre-reading activities that you can implement or modify to meet your student needs.

Pre-Reading Task #1: Discussion

The first pre-reading activity is about creating a discussion about the topic.

The Teacher prepares 4 sentences expressing opinions about the topic, then sticks them in the 4 corners of the classroom.

Students go and stand near the opinion they disagree with the most. The groups explain why the disagree about the topic to the teacher and the rest of the students

Pre-Reading Task #2: I'm listening to You

The second pre-listening task is called I'm listening to you. This activities can help teachers promote interaction in the class.

This activity requires students to work in pairs. One of them talks while his or her partner listens.

Then challenge them to talk in English for 1 minute about a topic.

Repeat with a new topic, students change roles and they can change partner after they have spoken and listened to each other.

Pre-Reading Task #3: Quotes

The third activity requires the use of quotes, you can choose quotes from great books.

Good Reads, a very popular site for readers has good lists of questions that you can choose from.

Find a quotation about the topic that you are going to cover and tell students to make groups of three and discuss the quotes you chose in advance.

Students think about and answer questions like these:

What does it mean?

Do they agree with it? Why/Why not.

Pre-Reading Task #4: Guessing from Words

Before students look at the text they are going to read, the teacher writes 5 or 6 words from the text on the board and asks the students to guess the topic.

Students brainstorm ideas and then the teacher confirms how close or far they were.

Pre-Reading Task #5: Guessing from Pictures

The teacher finds 3 pictures or objects which are connected to the story and ask the students to guess how they are connected.

Students read the text to check if they were right or wrong about the story connections they made.

Pre-Reading Task #6: Pictionary

Select some of the key words from the text.

Put the class into two or three groups. a learner from each group (at the same time) comes to the whiteboard.

They are told the word and they have to draw that word. They are not allowed to use letters or numbers in their drawing.

The other students try to guess what the word is and earn points for their team.

Pre-Reading Task #7: Guessing from sentences

The teacher dictates 3 sentences from the passage. Students write them down and check with a friend.

The sentences go on the board if necessary as a final check. Then the teacher asks how these sentences might be connected. What is the text about?

Students predict then read the text quickly to check their predictions.

Pre-Reading Task #8: How many words do you know?

The teacher prepares the board by writing the letters of the alphabet in 3 or 4 columns.

The students form two lines standing behind each other.

Use 2 colored markers so you know which team wrote what. The first student at the front of each team gets the board marker.

The teacher gives a topic to the class.

The 2 students move to the board and write one word related to the topic on the board next to the letter it begins with, then pass the marker to the next students in their team and go to the back of the queue.

The 2 teams compete to write as many words as possible on the board in 3 minutes.

The team with the largest number of appropriate and correctly spelled answers wins!

Pre-Reading Task #9: Speed chatting

Prepare one or two simple questions related to the topic of the reading.

Ask the class to make two rows facing each other. Then, encourage your learners to ask each other the questions, but warn them that they only have 60 seconds to do so.

Once the 60 seconds are up, one of the rows rotates so each learner has a new partner. Repeat the process several times.

Pre-Reading Task #10: Videos

There is so much good free content available these days. First, find a short video relating to the topic of the reading.

I would suggest something around three minutes long.

After watching the video yourself, prepare some simple discussion questions. Play the video and then ask the students to talk with a partner about what they watched.

Pre-Reading Task #11: Brainstorming

The teacher gives the title of the reading to the learners and students have to share their all their knowledge about the topic.

The goal of this activity is help learners create expectations about what they are about to read and then see if their expectation were met.

For example if you have to teach about the influence of social media on teenagers, students can take turn and talk about the topic, as they read they can confirm if the study they read confirm their expectations.

Pre-Reading Task #12:True or False

Let's take the example of the influence of social media on teenagers again.

You can come to the classroom and read a few statements and ask them if they think those statements are true or false.

don't reveal the answers and let them confirm if they were right or wrong when they are doing the reading.

Pre-Reading Task #13: Introducing Vocabulary

In the context of an ESL Classroom, it will always be important to introduce key vocabulary so students don't get discouraged by unknown words while they read.

Introducing vocabulary doesn't have to be a boring task, you can easily create a wordle with key vocabulary and see if students can tell you something about those words.

Pre-Reading Task #14: KWL Charts

Have you ever used KWL Charts in the classrooms?

KWL Charts are simple.

Just have students write everything they know about the topic (K column) and everything they want to know (W column) and what they learned after the reading (L Column)

Pre-Reading Task #15: Quotations

Prepare some quotes related to the topic and ask students to comment on them.

They don't have to do that as a class, they can make groups of 3 to 5 people and then a member of each group can share the ideas with other groups.

Conclusion

Remember that the pre-reading stage is the first of three stages, you should learn what types of while-reading activities you can do in the classroom and also the most common types of a after-reading strategies.

When you manage all of them, you reading lessons will succeed

Interested in Teaching English Articles?

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15 Examples of Pre-Reading Activities - EnglishPost.org

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Today you are going to learn about 15 pre-reading activities that you can use to start your reading lessons with the right foot. When reading is taught, teachers usually follow a framework to teach a lesson, that framework has three stages The Warm-up and the 3 stages made up what it is known as the Stages of a Reading Lessons.

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by Claudia Pesce 353,424 views

But becoming simply literate is not enough. For academic and professional success, you need to learn how to read well. ESL students, in particular, need to develop the reading skills that will enable them to not only comprehend texts in English, but also obtain what they need to deliver a response, whether this is a written/oral reply or an action they must take. These are the essential reading strategies that you should be teaching your students - at any level.

7 Reading Strategies Your ESL Students Must Know

1. Previewing

Previewing is absolutely essential for students to get a sense of what the text is about. Elements that are usually helpful for previewing are newspaper headlines or titles; images or photos; and signal words or format. For example, if the article has words like first, second, third, etc... at the beginning of each paragraph or is a numbered list, students will get the sense that the text lists steps or is a roundup article.

Reading Exercise: Choose a newspaper article with a great headline. Before reading the article, ask students what they think the article will be about, based on the headline.

2. Contextualizing

It is always helpful for students to learn to place the text within a context. Is the news article centered on something that happens everywhere in the world, or just in one specific location? Is this something that affects you, the reader, or other people in the world? Does the main character in the story go through something you can relate to, or something you have no experience in? These are great questions for students to think about as they read.

Reading Exercise: Before reading this text about Education in Britain, discuss the educational system in the country your students are currently in: How many years of grade school are there? How many years of high school? Students read about what it's like to go to school in Britain and compare it to their country.

3. Visualizing

Some students, especially those who are visual learners, need to "see" the information. Can you see the main character in your mind's eye based on the description? Can you picture the contaminated river as described in the news article? Visualizing also involves organizing the information in a visual way, usually through the use of a mind map or other graphic organizer.

Reading Exercise: Have students read a text like By the Water. After the reading, ask students to record the images that come to mind as they read: I can picture the sun shining on the water and the birds flying above ...

4. Asking and Answering Questions

What questions come to mind when you preview an article? How will the main character solve this problem? Students need to come up with questions they would like answered in the text and pay attention to how they are answered.

Reading Exercise: Read a news article or a piece like this one about the Boston Marathon. After reading the title, ask students to come up with three questions they expect the article will answer and then read to see if they find the answers.

5. Summarizing

After the reading, students should be able to summarize what they've read. This may be a short oral summary or a full paragraph. Summarizing includes a very important skill: getting the gist. What was the main point in the story? Summarizing is not retelling everything that happened as it happened, and students need to not only tell the difference, but also learn to give back information in a clear concise manner.

Reading Exercise: Ask the class to read the story of Helen of Troy. Then, ask them to summarize in just one sentence or two what caused the Troyan War.

6. Skimming

Skimming and scanning are usually considered speed-reading skills because they are not used for intensive reading. They are essential skills nonetheless, and students need to know that sometimes intensive reading is not necessary.

Skimming a text involves running your eyes over it quickly to get the main idea. It also allows you to identify which parts of a long text you might want to read more closely. This skill is particularly useful, for example, for Business English students who have to read long reports that are several pages long. By skimming the report, they can still follow the gist and stop when they find something of particular interest to them.

Reading Exercise: Hand out different magazines or newspapers in English, and tell the class they have five minutes to skim one. After they're done skimming, ask them what stories they remember reading.

7. Scanning

Scanning, on the other hand, allows you to quickly search a text for a particular piece of information. Scanning is ideal when students need to find a phone number in a directory, the date of a historical event or the time their train is leaving.

Reading Exercise: Show the class this PowerPoint slide about Jobs. Divide the class into groups and give each group 2-3 questions to answer. You can use the same questions that appear on the right but in a different order. Each group must scan the text to find the information they need to answer the questions.

Sometimes teaching ESL is more than "teaching English".

We must also teach skills and strategies that will help our students succeed in whatever they choose to do.

What other reading skills do you think are useful for ESL students? Share your thoughts below!

P.S. If you enjoyed this article, please help spread it by clicking one of those sharing buttons below. And if you are interested in more, you should follow our Facebook page where we share more about creative, non-boring ways to teach English.

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7 Essential Reading Strategies Your ESL Students Must Know (and YOU Must Teach)

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No one is born knowing how to read. But becoming simply literate is not enough. For academic and professional success, you need to learn how to read well. ESL students, in particular, need t

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Teach predicting skills by creating a warm up activity that activates prior knowledge (either content or grammar). Have students do an activity during the listening that demonstrates their listening ability. Have post-listening activity in which students engage with materials discussed in warm up activity.

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Listen to Tyrone calling the staff at his local swimming pool and do the exercises to practise and improve your listening skills.

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Teach some basic enunciation and have students practice reading sentences out loud. Take teaching opportunities to introduce new vocabulary. Look into theater activities that can be modified for ESL students.

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by abepiusc 62,915 views

In the test-based school environment that surrounds our classrooms, the skills of reading, writing, and grammar are increasingly important to our EFL students and to us as teachers.

Whether preparing for the TOEFL, IELTS, or a state-achievement test, we focus on developing our students' reading and writing skills. In the meantime, speaking skills get pushed to the back burner in the classroom as they're not frequently formally assessed. And yet, when our students interact with others in their daily life, whether interviewing for a job, asking for directions, or ordering at a restaurant, their speaking is constantly being assessed by those around them.

Speaking in a foreign language is stressful. When you think you're misunderstood and have to repeat your self, you become even more stressed. As your stress level rises, the quality of pronunciation tends to decrease. In order to give our students the confidence they need to face the real world, we need to teach practical ways to teach clear pronunciation. Here are a few teaching tips when working on pronunciation with your students.

How to Work on Pronunciation Effectively

1. Vowel Length

One of the biggest difficulties in clear pronunciation is vowel length. Short vowels aren't short enough and long vowels aren't long enough. Do contrasting exercises where long vowels are extra long (e.g. 'seeeeeat') and short vowels are very abrupt (e.g. 'sit'). This is especially great if you are doing short/long minimal pair exercises. It's important to exaggerate in the beginning so that students can hear the difference more clearly. Do competitions where students see who can hold the sound the longest. Over time, make the vowels shorter and shorter until they are the appropriate length.

Long vowels (& dipthongs)
The vowels in: beat, boat, boot, bait, bite
Short vowels: bet, bot, but , bat, bit

2. Mouth Positions

Studies have shown that explicit instruction in how to position the mouth while speaking greatly helps learners tackling difficult sounds. First, demonstrate with videos and exaggerate making the sounds yourself. Then pass out mirrors and have students observe their own mouth positions while forming the sounds. Here are some of the most important mouth positions for tricky English sounds:

Open mouth: b ot, b ou ght (note: for some English dialects, there is no distinction between these vowels)

Round mouth: b oat, b oo t,

Neutral position: b ut, b it, b e t

Corners of mouth pointed down (makes a frown): b eat / b a t

Tongue between teeth: threat; l et

3. Practice Listening

You need to hear it before you can say it. Encourage students to get as much listening experience outside of the classroom as possible. Assign listening reports in order to check in and see what kinds of English students are listening to outside of class. Listening doesn't have to be boring; tell students to listen to popular music, TV shows, movies, anything in English will work!

4. Write Tongue Twisters

Everyone knows that tongue twisters are a great way to practice pronunciation, but instead of doing all the work, share the load with your students. Having students create their own tongue twisters helps them to not only practice their pronunciation, but be more aware of which sounds are in the words they know. They will have to really think about how to say words to know which ones to include in their tongue twister, and everyone will have a laugh sharing the crazy sentences that result.

5. Feedback

It's incredibly important that students get feedback early and often before they begin bad pronunciation habits that are difficult to adjust as later learners. As a teacher, it can be difficult to maintain a large classroom and give individualized pronunciation feedback to many students. A good way to manage a large classroom is to make notes while students are speaking, for example during role plays or individual presentations. Make note of specific words/sounds that students struggle with while speaking in front of the class, and after the class, focus on the most frequent pattern of errors for that particular student. Keep a note card for each student that you can make notes on and then give to the student. You can also have the students keep track of errors on their note card; for example, if you correct them during class, they can make a note of the mispronounced word on their card so they can remember to practice later.

Alternatively, you can seek outside help for pronunciation feedback. There are some software programs and websites that can evaluate pronunciation. One of the best ones is www.EnglishCentral.com. The website is has a few free features, but as a paying subscriber, students can receive individualized feedback on their spoken pronunciation. The subscription fee is quite reasonable for the services it provides, and if you sign up as a class, you can get reports on all of your students.

Self-reflection feedback is also critical. If you're working with more advanced students, have them record themselves speaking and ask them to evaluate their own speech. If you're working with lower level learners, record yourself reading a passage or give them a recording of a native speaker reading a passage. Give them the same passage and have them record it. Tell them to listen to the two recordings multiple times to identify any words that don't sound the same. Repeating this task often will help them to monitor and be more aware of common errors.

6. Put the Stress on Stress

Often times, our students are misunderstood when speaking not because of the individual sounds, but because of inappropriate stress. Think about the word "A-luh-BAM-uh." Now, try saying it with inappropriately placed reduced syllables "AL-uh-buhm-uh." The word is essentially unrecognizable. Do stress marking activities where you can give students a list of words they already know and have them identify stressed and unstressed syllables until they understand the idea of stress. Practice knocking on the desks for each syllable; knocking extra loudly on the stress syllables and very gently for unstressed.

7. Practice Word Stress with Vocabulary

English has incredibly erratic word stress patterns which are rather difficult to learn due to all of the exceptions to the rules. The best way to learn word stress is to practice as you introduce new vocabulary words. As students study their new vocabulary, tell them which syllable to place the stress mark on so they can practice accurate pronunciation while learning the word.

Young learners tend to develop great pronunciation skills; however, the older the learner gets (high school and beyond), the more difficult it can be to have good pronunciation habits.

While they may not develop a native-like accent, the tips of above can help make them comprehensible and clear!

P.S. If you enjoyed this article, please help spread it by clicking one of those sharing buttons below. And if you are interested in more, you should follow our Facebook page where we share more about creative, non-boring ways to teach English.

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by abepiusc 62,915 views Whether preparing for the TOEFL, IELTS, or a state-achievement test, we focus on developing our students' reading and writing skills. In the meantime, speaking skills get pushed to the back burner in the classroom as they're not frequently formally assessed.

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Introduce gerunds to students. Create activities that allow students opportunities to use gerunds organically. Consider an activity in which students describe their hobbies.

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This page is brought to you by the OWL at Purdue University. When printing this page, you must include the entire legal notice.

Copyright ©1995-2018 by The Writing Lab & The OWL at Purdue and Purdue University. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, reproduced, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our terms and conditions of fair use.

Summary:
This handout provides a detailed overview (including descriptions and examples) of gerunds, participles, and infinitives.

A gerund is a verbal that ends in -ing and functions as a noun. The term verbal indicates that a gerund, like the other two kinds of verbals, is based on a verb and therefore expresses action or a state of being. However, since a gerund functions as a noun, it occupies some positions in a sentence that a noun ordinarily would, for example: subject, direct object, subject complement, and object of preposition.
Gerund as subject:

Traveling might satisfy your desire for new experiences. (Traveling is the gerund.)

The study abroad program might satisfy your desire for new experiences. (The gerund has been removed.)

Gerund as direct object:

They do not appreciate my singing. (The gerund is singing.)

They do not appreciate my assistance. (The gerund has been removed)

Gerund as subject complement:

My cat's favorite activity is sleeping. (The gerund is sleeping.)

My cat's favorite food is salmon. (The gerund has been removed.)

Gerund as object of preposition:

The police arrested him for speeding. (The gerund is speeding.)

The police arrested him for criminal activity. (The gerund has been removed.)

A gerund phrase is a group of words consisting of a gerund and the modifier(s) and/or (pro)noun(s) or noun phrase(s) that function as the direct object(s), indirect object(s), or complement(s) of the action or state expressed in the gerund, such as:
The gerund phrase functions as the subject of the sentence.

Finding a needle in a haystack would be easier than what we're trying to do.

Finding (gerund)
a needle (direct object of action expressed in gerund)
in a haystack (prepositional phrase as adverb)
The gerund phrase functions as the direct object of the verb appreciate.

I hope that you appreciate my offering you this opportunity.

my (possessive pronoun adjective form, modifying the gerund)
offering (gerund)
you (indirect object of action expressed in gerund)
this opportunity (direct object of action expressed in gerund)
The gerund phrase functions as the subject complement.

Tom's favorite tactic has been jabbering away to his constituents.

jabbering away to (gerund)
his constituents (direct object of action expressed in gerund)
The gerund phrase functions as the object of the preposition for.

You might get in trouble for faking an illness to avoid work.

faking (gerund)
an illness (direct object of action expressed in gerund)
to avoid work (infinitive phrase as adverb)
The gerund phrase functions as the subject of the sentence.

Being the boss made Jeff feel uneasy.

Being (gerund)
the boss (subject complement for Jeff, via state of being expressed in gerund)

Punctuation

A gerund virtually never requires any punctuation with it.

Points to remember:

1. A gerund is a verbal ending in -ing that is used as a noun.

2. A gerund phrase consists of a gerund plus modifier(s), object(s), and/or complement(s).

3. Gerunds and gerund phrases virtually never require punctuation.

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This page is brought to you by the OWL at Purdue University. When printing this page, you must include the entire legal notice. Copyright ©1995-2018 by The Writing Lab & The OWL at Purdue and Purdue University. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, reproduced, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission.