More on pen pals: Start a Pen Pal Exchange project for students on the Virtual Writing Tutor. For instructions on how to create a pen pal exchange for your students, check out these step-by-step pen pal exchange creation instructions for teachers. Click here for an article on pen pals that students can read to introduce them
Read on »Posts By: Nicholas Walker
How to Create a Pen Pal Exchange on the Virtual Writing Tutor
Click here to start a Pen Pal Exchange Click here to read about the features on the Pen Pal Exchange Step 1: Click on “Templates.” Click “New” to create a template from scratch. Give your template a descriptive name. Pen pals will see the name on their dashboards. If you want to try a ready-made
Read on »Free Grammar Practice Activities
Here are some links to free online grammar practice activities to help you or your students get additional grammar help eliminating grammar errors. Online activities provide instant feedback, which helps learners know what they are doing right and what they need to improve. These activities are best done on a computer rather than on the
Read on »Conjugations of the verb “to go”
VERB FORM: go/goes RULE: For events that always repeat, use the Simple Present. To go (Present Simple) PERSON SINGULAR PLURAL 1st person I go We go 2nd person You go You go 3rd person He goes, she goes, it goes They go VERB FORM: am/is/are going RULE: To talk about an event in progress, use
Read on »Visual Guide to English Prepositions: in, on, at, from, to
Do you have difficulty with English prepositions? Prepositions can be difficult to learn, especially when they are used differently in your first language. For example, the preposition “at” works and sounds like the preposition “à” in French sentences like this: Je suis à l’école. In English, we would say, “I am at school.” But in other
Read on »Oral Practice Strategy: 5-Finger Drill
Saying a vocabulary item aloud increases your ability to remember it by 10% (MacLeod, et al., 2010). Even mouthing the word improves your ability to remember it. 5-finger drill To really make a word or phrase stick in your memory, use the five-finger drill. Say the word aloud five times, counting on your fingers. When
Read on »How to Use the Past Perfect Simple
Download a lesson on the past perfect for Business English. You are free to photocopy it for classroom purposes. When we talk about a past event that happened before another past event, we use the Past Perfect Simple. Use the Past Perfect Simple when you name a later event before an earlier event. Key phrases:
Read on »Pen Pal Exchange Project
Useful links on the pen pals: Start a Pen Pal Exchange project for students on the Virtual Writing Tutor. For instructions on how to create a pen pal exchange for your students, check out these step-by-step pen pal exchange creation instructions for teachers. Click here for an article on pen pals that students can read to
Read on »Pen Pals
Do you have a pen pal? Have you ever had a pen pal? Probably not. Writing to a an anonymous correspondent used to be a popular hobby. Not anymore. It has fallen out of favour these days as people spend more and more time on social media websites. Perhaps, you don’t even know what a
Read on »What’s the Difference Between Much, Many, Little, and A Lot?
RULE: “Many” is used with countable plural nouns like “children” and “students.” “Much,” on the other hand, can only be used with uncountable nouns like “money” or “homework.” “A lot” can be used with both. Many RULE: Use “many” with plurals. INCORRECT: There were much people waiting in line. CORRECT: There were many
Read on »Learn Grammar and Vocabulary through Music Videos
A fun way to learn English is by listening to and singing songs. Pop songs deal with personal and dramatic themes that people are drawn to. They also employ advanced grammar and vocabulary. Check out this selection of music videos on the Virtual Writing Tutor. Listen to the song and fill in the blanks or
Read on »Card Game and Grammar Rules for Sports, Games and Exercise
Do we say “I do skiing,” or “I play ski” or just “I ski?” Incorrect: I play skiing. I do skiing during the winter. I like ski. Correct: I ski. I like skiing. I ski during the winter.Rule: “Ski” is a verb. It is not the name of a game, so conjugate it as
Read on »There versus Their
Here’s a clever way to remember the difference between “there” and “their.
Read on »Traditional versus Hypertext Fiction
The majority of narrative structures we read are linear. Traditionally, there is a beginning, middle and an end, with the story following a unidirectional timeline. The reader interacts with the text in a limited and predictable way, by reading the words on the page, by turning the pages, and by imagining the characters, actions, and
Read on »Narrative versus Argument
Imagine two tribes of humans living in the same part of prehistoric Africa. One tribe is called the Story People, and the other tribe is called the Practical People. Times are tough, and both tribes are competing for the same scarce resources. They are equal in every way, except after the Story People come home
Read on »Narrative, Person, Distance and Author
What is Narrative? A narrative is the combination of a story and its presentation. The first of these two elements, story, is a series of events involving entities, with a beginning, middle, and end. The entities in the story can be sentient, such as in stories about people or human-like talking animals, or entities can
Read on »Storytelling at Xerox
Quite a few ESL teachers believe that reporting and argumentation skills are paramount for workplace success. Essay-writing remains at the center of nearly every college English as a Second Language course and Business English course. There are good reasons to question the over-emphasis on 5-paragraph essay writing and to reintroduce narrative writing into English Second Language courses.
Read on »Storytelling at the World Bank
Many ESL teachers feel that argumentation skills are essential for academic and workplace success. Essay-writing remains at the heart of every college ESL course and Business English course. There are good reasons to question the over-emphasis on 5-paragraph essay writing and to reintroduce narrative writing into English Second Language courses. In Storytelling in Organizations, Stephen Denning
Read on »5 Easy Blog Posts for Your ESL Writing Class
There is a new way to market products to consumers and get the attention of potential employers. It is called content marketing. The way it works is this: you publish articles (content) on a blog, and people looking for information using a search engine will find you and learn to like, trust and respect you
Read on »5 Great Reasons ESL Students Should Blog
There are over 150 million blogs on the internet today. Why so many? People read blogs and rely on them for information. Reading blogs is great, but why should ESL students start blogs? It is a good question. Here are 5 great reasons for ESL students to create a blog in English. 1. Improve your
Read on »What is the difference between “attracted to” and “attracted by”?
To understand the difference, we have to ask what the target is and what the cause of the attraction? Here is an example. John was attracted TO teaching. He was attracted BY the promise of a long summer vacation. Teaching is the target of the attraction. A long summer vacation is the cause of the
Read on »Do online grammar checkers affect writing apprehension and language learning anxiety?
There does not appear to be any research that answers the question about grammar checkers and writing apprehension reduction directly. To begin to answer the question, a review of the literature on writing apprehension, anxiety, willingness to communicate, and web-based activities would help. If you are looking for articles on the development of the Virtual Writing Tutor
Read on »Need a research question in English Pedagogy or Applied Linguistics?
The Virtual Writing Tutor is a free English Second Language grammar checker. Research into the pedagogy of online grammar checkers is still new. Not a lot is known about how they are used by teachers, by learners, what their effect is on writing apprehension and accuracy. If you need a topic for your master’s thesis and
Read on »Introducing Yourself Online and in Person
First impressions have a lasting impact. It is critical therefore to be equipped with the know-how to create the right impression on people you meet online or in person for the first time. This article focuses on how to achieve this when introducing yourself to a room full of people or to a pen pal
Read on »Teaching the Social Curriculum
Schools usually have a very strict and clear academic curriculum. The social curriculum can be less clear, but it’s just as important for the development of children into healthy adults. The social curriculum relates to teaching students how to interact and empathize with others. Learning these things helps young people to build healthy relationships and
Read on »Membership advantages
Members can check 3000 words at a time, save text and feedback, translate feedback into 70 languages, create hypertext narratives and essay outlines, send PDFs with voice recordings, track errors, play error correction games, post essays to forums for additional feedback, with more features on their way. Features Non-member *Signed-in Member *Premium Member Price Ad-supported
Read on »Logical Fallacies
A well-constructed argument avoids logical fallacies, flaws in the reasoning that will render the argument invalid. Following are some of the most common logical fallacies. 11 Logical Fallacies Explained Oversimplification. The tendency to provide simple solutions to complex problems. “The reason we have low unemployment today is the threat of war in Central America and
Read on »6 Common ESL Errors
One thing I have become acutely aware of while working on the VirtualWritingTutor.com ESL grammar checker is just how common some errors are in college students’ writing. I see the same errors day after day, year after year. I could easily come up with a list of about 100 common errors that college students should avoid, but
Read on »Add your own ESL grammar checker to a webpage with an iframe
Hey Teachers, you are going to love this! Create your own English Second Language website and embed a free grammar checker into it in seconds. Here’s how: Step 1: Create a blog Create a blog on Blogger or some other blogging platform to communicate with your students. Step 2: Create a blog post Click on
Read on »Are Narratives Superior to 5-Paragraph Persuasive Essays?
Many teachers believe that the 5-paragraph persuasive essay is the only appropriate writing task for college-level students. Almost all of the college-level ESL textbooks published for the Quebec market include units on the so-called 5-paragraph persuasive essay, but units on narrative writing rarely appear. This dearth is unfortunate since there are some very good reasons to
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