Writing, Lesson Three

The second week, lessons three and four, started with a review of capitalization and punctuation.  This was a pretty easy lesson to put together; my students have been studying English for several years now and felt that this lesson was a bit boring and unneccessary--but, I have a schedule to stick to, and besides, even though they "already know this stuff", their writing shows that they could use a reminder every now and then.

In the part about capitalization, I reviewed basic rules quickly, and spent most of the time on capitalizing titles, which they had less experience with.  I used the titles of many classics as examples, which led to some discussion of words they didn't understand in the title: rye, wrath, solitude, bondage, tenant, half-blood.  Bonus points to anyone who can list the titles those words come from in the comment section!

I did break the tedium of the puntuation review a bit (at least for me); I used the classic grammar example of "Let's eat Grandpa!" as compared to "Let's eat, Grandpa!" which thankfully the students did find amusing and understood the point (you never know, cross-culturally, when sometimes a bit of humor just won't translate). I found a few other examples online; one was a magazine cover that said, "Rachael Ray finds inspiration in cooking her family and her dog."  Then, I put the first paragraph of The Lion, the Witch,and the Wardrobe up; I had rewritten it with bad capitalization and punctuation, and they had to rewrite it in their journals correctly.  It's one of my favorite books, with a good message; you never know, someone might get curious and read it.

The journal topic for the week was "What is your favorite book, and why?"  At least with a topic like that, not everyone will write about the same thing.  ***later edit: there was a wide variety, but the most popular by far with Jane Eyre, which apparently they just read recently for another class.***