Academic essay writing

This is one of my favourite and successful lessons. I took the idea from an IELTS class and amended it for all of my students who need to write an academic essay. This could easily be used over a double lesson depending on how you want to approach it. You can get the students to write the whole essay, or better yet get them to write it a paragraph at a time, then show your corresponding paragraph. This lesson is a step by step approach to essay writing. First identify what type of essay the student is to write and then focus on the structure and coherence of the work: talk about transitions, grammar, spelling, cohesion etc. Then the 5 paragraphs of the essay are identified. Deliberate mistakes are included (e.g. introduction paragraph is weak) so students can hopefully identify these in the essay. Finally, an essay can be set as homework following on from what you have taught over 2 lessons.