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Very Good!!! The Super Sentence Machine helps kids develop sentence writing abilities and improve their voice and writing expression. This would be a good site to use as a whole-class activity to show students how to write more grammatically complex sentences.

Very Good!!! The Super Sentence Machine helps kids develop sentence writing abilities and improve their voice and writing expression. This would be a good site to use as a whole-class activity to show students how to write more grammatically complex sentences.

" The printables encourage writing and thinking in a quick and fun way. A student's efforts to complete the printable can then become the first step in writing longer essays, poems or stories on the same subject. The printables also can be used with students enrolled in literacy and English-As-Second Language (ESL, ESOL) programs and provide an educational resource for teaching language arts." Over 250 printables that can be used for writing prompts.

This resource from the University of Victoria offers a set of advisory files primarily on writing about literature. It has basic information about types of essays, essay organization, basic steps in writing process, types and function of paragraphs. The website also offers guidelines on writing clear sentences, and introduces rhetorical and literary terms. -- From Lena Shvidko Very, very complete OWL.

This web resource is for teachers of high beginning and intermediate writing courses and intermediate ESL learners. The resource provides 8 units that 1) teach about paragraph structure and paragraph elements: topic sentence, supporting sentences, and concluding sentence 2) introduce transition words and coherence in a paragraph 3) provide the opportunity to learn about and practice basic writing skills such as making an outline and staying on topic. Clear explanations are supported by examples; therefore, teacher can use this resource for class preparation, and ESL learners can use it as additional material to learn about paragraph writing. Practice activities provided by the website are not interactive; however, most of the assessment tasks have answer keys. In addition, each unit provides lesson in a PDF format that can be used by a teacher as a handout. -- From Lena Shvidko For ESL K-12 learners, but would be useful for adults as well. Focuses on the paragraph, rather than the essay, so makes a good beginning set of lessons.

"Students love to write fiction, and the short story is a good way to get them going. This page outlines a quickie lesson plan for writing a short story using the 5-way story starter, which plunges the reader (and the writer) into the action quickly."

Webinar with dozens of ideas for using online tools to teach young learners writing. Offered at the 2012 EVO. Shelly Terrell offers free webinars every Friday at 21:00 GMT. go to tinyurl.com/ELTLinks to see a list of recent offerings. Recordings are also available for this free online professional development series.

"Kids Spelling, Grammar and Writing Games"

Children create their own commic strip using characters provided from database. Not specifically for ESL/EFL, but is a nice writing activity, and can be in any of several European languages. William Zimmerman has created a page with his handouts from a workshop, "Creating Comic Strips Online to Encourage Writing, Reading and Storytelling," at the TESOL Denver 2009 conference, at http://www.makebeli efscomix. com/How-to- Play/Educators --EHS

This is the first of 5 articles for Academic Writing, by an obviously experienced writing teacher.

Upload pictures, write text, and the program animates the message, and plays it as a sequence, then sends it to friends. Nice short writing assignment or digital story-telling adventure. Rec. by Russell Stannard.

This article has a thorough discussion of the reading-writing connections for ESL primary school, and includes a nice reading response worksheet in the appendix. Article by Annmarie Jackson, GSU.

Although the home page looks like it's for children, the text is really fairly complex, so high school or adult is more appropriate. Offers suggestions on point of view, reviews, summaries, etc. A sophisticated mind-mapper.

Songs/music videos with lyrics side-by-side. Should be great for teens and young adult learners. (Also great if you never could understand those words!) Have your students write their own lyrics to songs. Or write their own music as a project. If using clips in a project, be sure to respect copyright.

online collaborative writing

online collaborative writing

"City College of San Francisco ESL students explore the Living Roof at the California Academy of Sciences with its 1.7 million native plants and exciting green technology which controls the building's temperature. Instructor: Cora Chen (visit Cora's ESL Page)" This is a nice example of how a day-trip can be combined into a media and reading-writing project for adult students.

Stannard gives a quick overview of http://www.rhymes.net, which helps you find words that rhyme with other words. But he doesn't mention that the site speaks the word too! There are also many other tools, such as a dictionary, words with multi-syllables, quotations using the word, phrases, abbreviations, etc. Great for vocabulary work, pronunciation, and writing poetry.

Shows how you can use Xtranormal to make 3-D characters. Your students can create a movie scenario, write the script, make the characters, select camera angles, add voices (in several languages) in quite long dialogues, and share the movie by email. Stannard takes you through the entire process (about 10 min.) using a Camtasia screencast.

A place to create stories associated with geographical places. Should be a nice way for students to explore the world, write, create, and share stories.