Hanif Jodeiry Hanif Jodeiry

Explore Writing
Pre-intermediate - B1 level

Description

In this lesson students will learn about writing an email or note of apology based on 2 emails (reading activity) that are included in the handout from "Inside Out as samples. They will also learn how to distinguish and write different parts of a letter of apology which - at this stage - consists of apologies, excuses and good wishes. The tasks included in the book are very complicated and they require extra effort both on the learners' side and the teacher's.

Materials

Abc Handout
Abc Gap-fill on board
7urbqjoqigfbivdw9eeu barack obama on phone with benjamin netanyahu 2009 06 08 copy Pictures

Main Aims

  • Writing an email or note of apology via exposure to samples as models

Subsidiary Aims

  • Learners will be doing reading-based tasks (skimming, scanning and reading for gist) to get ready for the writing.

Procedure

Lead-in (5 minutes) • To warm up and set the context and review previous session's lesson in brief

I will start the class with asking students: "I want to go on a shopping with you to the Egyptian Bazaar "to do some shopping" and "bargaining" for the weekend. Who wants to join me. ..." Then my mobile set in alarm mode goes on ringing. I will answer the mobile and pretend I am talking to Obama and will ask the students to help me with some excuses (Egyptian Bazaar shopping plan) for not attending a dinner party... In the end there will be pictures of the excuses / reasons / good wishes / on the board in set rows and columns.

Presentation 1: Free practice: Excuse (3 minutes) • To elicit some personal excuses from the students

Students at this stage start working in pairs on bringing up an excuse. I will write the related words on the whiteboard.

Presentation 2: Reading for gist (3 minutes) • exposure to some samples + answering questions

Students will be given a short time to answer the questions after they read the 2 emails.

Presentation 3: cut up (3 minutes) • Learners try to put the pieces into order

A calendar of events "might" be displayed on the WB if they have problems. Students are given some papers and they have to put them into order according to the timeline of events. Board rush will be used to promote speed.

Clarification via exposure (3 minutes) • Fill in the gaps

Students try to match the cut-up sections according to the information they have on the board. Through exposure to the functional language, some parts might be explained and clarified.

Controlled practice (3 minutes) • Some more Functional Language is practiced via cut-up replacement

Students are now a bit aware of the text items and can replace the similar parts given to them. They are experimenting the use of new linguistic items via a piloted task. All they have to do is to come up to the board, find the appropriate info according the their knowledge of both grammar and lexis and replace the new cut-ups over the old ones.

Extension (3 minutes) • categorisation of the info

To ensure that they can distinguish the 3 chief parts of a letter of apology, they are provided with a task that requires them to organise the info into 3 distinct categories: apologies / excuses / good wishes.

Semi-restricted output (10 minutes) • Writing a letter of apology.

At this level, they are already exposed to a lot of samples and functional language. By using some of the same structures from the texts, some of the students may be able to write an acceptably correct letter of apology. In areas that problems rise, I will try to ask for some peer correction as much as I can. Otherwise "I" will correct the errors.

Extra activity • extra time make-up

Practicing "CELTA writing input" techniques - free writing "Mad Lib" activity in case we have some time left

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