You can also recommend that your students use some of these greetings and sign-offs common with personal emails. courses that prepare you to earn All rights reserved. That way, if they don’t catch their errors, their classmates probably will. 11 Useful Tips to Boost Your Intermediate ESL Students’ Reading Comprehension, 7 ESL Video Activities That Your Students Will Love, They reinforce the grammar of conditional vs. present simple, They offer flexible context for multiple grammar points, such as forming questions, teaching perfect tenses and reviewing verb conjugation. Now that we’ve looked at tips for language and structure, how should you implement actually actively practicing email in the classroom? There are tons of great choices there when you’re looking for videos for in-class activities. 13 Ways To Use Email in Your ESL classroom . Learn more. If you haven’t already taught them conditionals, here are some ideas on how to teach and practice those bad boys. While funny, Homestar Runner isn’t an accurate representation of email etiquette. ← 6 Steps to Making New Words Go From Unknown to Acquired What was the best or worst email you have ever received? Sprinkle Excitement in the Classroom with These 8 ESL Spelling Games, 5 ESL Listening Exercises to Sharpen Your Students’ Ears, How to Teach 100 ESL Vocabulary Words in One Lesson, 5 Ways to Find Great ESL Teaching Materials on a Budget, 7 Best ESL Textbooks for Teaching Students Both Young and Old, 10 Creative Ways to Use Popular Movies in Fun ESL Lessons, Teaching English with Music: 4 Effective Ways to Use Music in the ESL Classroom, 7 Irresistibly Fun ESL Video Activities to Teach Listening Comprehension. On FluentU, all the videos are sorted by skill level and are carefully annotated for students. It’s Just Business: 4 Great Business Activities You Can Do With Your ESL Class; How to Use Email Writing in the ESL Classroom; Dramatically improve the way you teach: check out our writing resources. If your students are learning to communicate in English, then you already know how important it is to help them develop vocabulary and grammar. Have your students compare and contrast the emails and speculate on the impact they would have on their recipients. 30-day money back guarantee. Working Nine to Five. The emails we get as adults range from funny and informal to serious and professional, and can inspire a variety of mixed emotions depending on our situations. Emailing can often be a scary task for your students, especially in a new, strange language that they don’t feel very confident about yet. Not everything revolves around grammar and structure. That’s why email writing is a key ingredient to effective communication. However, now that I’m back in the United States, I’m recalling some good ones I used to use with friends: The tone here is loving, yet not romantic. credit by exam that is accepted by over 1,500 colleges and universities. Introducing Phrasal Verbs to ESL Students. study 1000 ESL Conversation Questions; ESL Activities for Kids; About/Contact; You are here: Home / ESL Teaching Tips and Theory / Tips and activities for teaching writing. The format of an email, whether casual or formal, will take on the same basic structure. True False 3. True False 2. I’m writing because Sandra requested the budget numbers for fall quarter 2017. attachment, read receipt, disclaimer, etc. Log in here for access. Transform your students’ feelings of dread and uncertainty around emails to something that’s no big deal. But emails are the perfect place for creating rapport with a person, whether in a business or personal context. Doing an exchange with a native English speaker is a great way to learn new realistic vocabulary. For instance, they could discuss any challenges that came up and what they learned or took away from the experience. Time. This lesson teaches useful words and expressions for writing emails in English. Using their own knowledge of English grammar, students can then locate and correct any errors they come across in the email. This formality with the conditional also shows up in other contexts, such as when you’re eating or going shopping. Writing an Email of Feedback: Giving Feedback. And all kisses are romantic in English, unlike in many, many, other cultures. All Rights Reserved. Email activities will help your students in their journey of communicating with native English speakers, regardless of the context. Services. What the Flip is a Flipped ESL Classroom? Writing is perhaps the most difficult and tedious areas of the communicative approach to teach for several reasons. Students are given several emails. But it’s a little more subtle when talking to coworkers or in other professional contexts. The other will be personal and will include an example of a greeting and a sign-off. You don't have to include all the points mentioned in the question. Welcome to ESL Printables, the website where English Language teachers exchange resources: ... Reading & Writing activities with 11 questions Level: intermediate Age: 14-17 Downloads: 364 : email from your penpal Level: advanced Age: 13-17 Downloads: 373 : Another activity using emails in pedagogical practices Level: intermediate Age: 10-17 Downloads: 358 : James´ e-mail Level: … Finally, I was wondering if any extra-curricular activities such as lectures or excursions are offered at your school. This lesson focuses on how to write an email in English. Email writing Worksheet 1 Formal letter, to be cut up into strips. When the chart is complete, keep it hanging on your classroom wall for future reference. Some of the answers I received are here. Close filters. If they have time to practice outside of the classroom, you could even arrange a real pen pal for your students. You can utilize an email writing activity to help your students build confidence … As seen in the personal email: “Can I tell you I’m sorry for everything that I’ve done?” when Adele talks to her ex. We have several free ESL writing lessons on this page, including sample essays, sentence patterns, writing assignments, and more! To give your learners an opportunity to practice tone differences, have them write two short emails. Writing emails. One will be professional and include an example of a greeting, sign-off and common phrase. Log in or sign up to add this lesson to a Custom Course. If you like these lessons, consider buying our ESL writing textbooks to get even more content just like this! For this activity, it’s best to put students into pairs and have them write emails to each other, while pretending to be someone else. Students analyze how requests are made in emails … For most people, emails are a quintessential part of day-to-day communication—especially in the professional world. The conditional structures will be your students’ friends when crafting an email. Email Writing Research. FluentU takes real-world videos—like music videos, cartoons, documentaries and more—and turns them into personalized language learning lessons for you and your students. This lesson offers specific exercises for teaching ESL students to write an email. At the end of the week, have each pair review their correspondence together. Living in an age of smartphones, where we’re constantly connected by WhatsApp, Skype and other quick-to-use technologies, you may wonder why instructing about the art of emails should be a priority in your classroom. They can start out with personal or professional, whichever best suits their needs. Did anyone else watch Homestar Runner as a kid? The other should use inappropriate etiquette, such as no greeting, bad punctuation and grammar and excessive informality. This exercise helps students think about how emails are similar to and different from other forms of communication. flashcard set, {{courseNav.course.topics.length}} chapters | Read an email from Habib, answer questions and write your own email. flashcard set{{course.flashcardSetCoun > 1 ? How to Write a Business Report for English Learners. We hate SPAM and promise to keep your email address safe, Sign up for our weekly blog newsletter for a chance to win a free FluentU Plus subscription (value $240), Get regular language learning tips, resources and updates, starting with the "Complete Guide to Foreign Language Immersion" e-book. Popular articles like this. You need some basic background knowledge first, such as basic grammar and vocabulary, but once you know this, just practice. For example, if you teach the conditional, you could include a sentence such as: If you could forward this email to Laura, that will be great. Not only does this make learning grammar fun and more effective, it also teaches students how to talk like a native English speaker. There are also flashcards for you to download and print to help you, in the voc… Each email revises one unit from Business one : one. This ESL writing experience has to encompass fun and creativity too! credit-by-exam regardless of age or education level. Mid-lesson to assess students’ absorption and retention. Then, ask them to share their work with the class, and give classmates a chance to critique and comment on each other's work. just create an account. {{courseNav.course.mDynamicIntFields.lessonCount}} lessons This is the last week of new content to help ESL students learn English writing. If you liked these fun activities, you’ll love using FluentU in your classroom. Teaching Writing to ESL Beginners: A Tough Job. To really give your students an amazing grammar lesson, add FluentU to your next lesson plan. 90 mins. Words come with example sentences and definitions. Ask students to focus particularly on the how-to suggestions that go along with writing email. Email writing provides ESL students with the chance to write in a real-life context, ... That's 4,036 pages filled with thousands of practical activities and tips that you can start using today. No one likes getting those “Yeaaaah, if you could work on Saturday, that would be great” notes, even if they do help you remember your conditionals. If you are an ESL teacher on VIPKID then you must consider the following things before selecting ESL Writing Activities for your students; You must choose the activities that can easily be done online because communication between you and your students will be done using VIPKID’s online video chatting software. While emails need not get excessively personal, they should be amiable and social in nature. In this case, you can suggest a similar exercise, but between coworkers or bosses and coworkers. Earn Transferable Credit & Get your Degree. Ask them to highlight or underline five key differences between their emails, then write the second composition in class and mark the differences between the personal and professional email. When I worked as a tutor at my university writing center, I discovered the best way to have people catch their writing mistakes is for them to do it themselves. Check out this activity to help our students out with this: Fluency ESL Writing Activity. Here is an email which I sent to many hotels in Korea. To teach or revise the rules of writing emails in English by studying the differences between formal letters, and informal and semi-formal email; Materials. What can happen if someone steals your email password? Please check your email for further instructions. Your students should have examples of the professional and personal style written. Practise your email writing by using the five exercises below. Teaching beginners to write in English can be a very difficult job. Blended Learning | What is Blended Learning? To evaluate comprehension of this grammar point, have your learners compose a second email. | 1 can take anywhere. ----- I would be grateful for any information you can give me and I look forward to hearing from you soon. I recommend putting your students into pairs for this activity. Remote Learning: How School Districts Can Help Their Schools and Teachers, How to Use Study.com to Improve Your Grades, Study.com's Top Online Leadership Training Courses, Tech and Engineering - Questions & Answers, Health and Medicine - Questions & Answers, Working Scholars® Bringing Tuition-Free College to the Community, Following up with someone they met casually at an event, Asking a teacher questions about what happened in a missed class. Have you ever gotten a computer virus from email? How to Write a Business Email of Rejection. Can I tell you I’m sorry for everything that I’ve done? Emails have a lot of potential for helping students explore their creativity as well. 1. Below are two written examples you can use. After all, no employer is going to appreciate an employee who can write a simple, but perfect email in half a day! Writing skills practice: A more formal email – exercises Look at the exam question and email and do the exercises to practise and improve your writing skills. Worksheets: can be printed out for use in class. Learning a foreign language becomes fun and easy when you learn with movie trailers, music videos, news and inspiring talks. Have partners work together to compose an email that seems relevant to their scenario. Wouldn’t it be fun to see what in-office emails between Marceline and Jake look like? ESL Writing Activities. I was wondering if after all these years you’d like to go over everything. I hope all is well and that you had a pleasant weekend. The lesson warms up with a vocabulary exercise in which the students study some common terms for describing emails and email features, e.g. A slower and longer form of communication than face-to-face conversations, emailing gives your students an opportunity to focus deeply on language and structure. Email practice. When students know how to email, they feel confident reaching out to others digitally and maintaining both social and professional relationships online. Aims. Exercise 5 Birthday Party gives you practice for the IGCSE ESL Exam where you write approximately 150–200 words in response to a short stimulus (which may take the form of pictures) and/or short prompts. Make sure to provide the time and technology for this activity, either in class or at the school library, so that all students can participate regardless of their online access at home. Level. Tips and activities for teaching writing. To unlock this lesson you must be a Study.com Member. This language is put into … I lived in Argentina for years, and the reverse culture shock around the lack of affectionate sign-offs in English was strong. This slideshow provides basic data about email messages. Allmethods to learn English writing are based on doing and practicing. After everyone has finished, grade the assignments and correct for any mistakes. I trust you as a superstar creative educator to spin emails into an expanded opportunity for teaching points and play. Create your account, Already registered? To prepare for this exercise, assemble and print some samples of emails and provide students with photocopied packets to read in advance. attachment, read receipt, disclaimer, etc. Heck, make it such an evolution that they will have the same silly look on their faces as Homestar Runner when he exclaims: “Emailz!”. FluentU is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com. What is the Difference Between Blended Learning & Distance Learning? This exercise looks at both the structure and the vocabulary you should use when you give feedback to somebody by email. © copyright 2003-2020 Study.com. Visit the Academic Subjects for English Language Learners page to learn more. It will look like this: Next, you can give your ESL learners concrete examples of the email in a professional vs. personal context. For this exercise, you’ll assign students emails with mistakes embedded in them. While the two emails above are starkly different in tone, their structure is basically the same. Ask the students to do the second exercise which focuses on appropriate formulas for writing informal letters or emails. If you have several emails written for different reasons or with different levels of formality mixed up together, students can get an idea of how they differ as they separate the texts and put them into order. This site has a vocabulary sectionto help you learn useful words to use when writing. As an alternative, you can re-design the project as a whole-class activity. Level: Upper-Intermediate. The vocabulary lists are all based around important topics. Bring English immersion to your classroom! Students will be able to add them to their own vocabulary lists, and even see how the words are used in other videos. So, if they wrote a personal email for the previous activity, ask your student to write a professional one for this exercise. This ESL writing activity is more for young adults and adult learners, since children aren’t sending too many emails, in theory. Create an account to start this course today. A couple basic structures to emphasize are: Another important thing to note is how you refer to people in emails. In a business email, your ESL students will need to keep the language formal and conditional, without being too impersonal. While the structure between the personal and professional emails is slightly similar, their tones are miles apart. imaginable degree, area of After you’ve explained the basic outline and given examples, have students write a sample email as homework. first two years of college and save thousands off your degree. When using the conditional vs. present simple, the conditional is usually employed when addressing a more formal audience. Setup for ESL Writing Activities Explain that their job is to compose one email apiece every day over the course of a week. Lot’s of great worksheets and activities to keep your students engaged and learning. Neurological research has shown that music and language are processed in the same area of the brain and that there are similarities in linguistic and musical processing. 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Or, if your students are the dramatic types, you could have them structure their character emails as a narrative and do a staged reading. Sciences, Culinary Arts and Personal Ask students to focus particularly on the how-to suggestions that go along with writing email. Pair up your students, and provide each partnership with a sample scenario. 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For a more grammar-based emphasis, do a fill-in-the-blank exercise where they have to add “would” or “could” to a sentence. Part of learning to communicate in English is also learning how to follow social norms and practices related to communication, like writing emails. Expanding Descriptive Verb Use . As an ESL teacher, this makes it easy to transition between email lessons and vocabulary, while also reviewing and reinforcing the same grammar. Most would expect it to happen in a few minutes. IGCSE ESL Exercise 5 Birthday Party is a good example of an informal email which has the appropriate content and language to gain a high mark in this part of the exam. #14: Word Association . Basic: beginner level (A1-A2) Independent: intermediate level (B1-B2) Proficient: our highest level (C1-C2) Basic; Independent; Proficient; Time 0–5 minutes; 5–10 minutes; 10+ minutes; Update results. Let students know these greetings are commonly used between friends. I like to use this quick writing activity if I know that students have studied the topic of the day before. Luckily for you as an ESL teacher, emails can also help you cover a number of different teaching points with your students.