Comments on Writing

    Zhai Shenjun/Teaching & Research Department of ZC

    It goes without saying there is no easy way to turn out high school graduates with the writing skills required by universities, but there is a simple way that a teacher, who’s working at a

    Beijing English Training Center, whose lessons I took at my own cost in 2008, to assure me have writing skills that I need. I'll share what I've learned from him.

    1. Words first, brainstorming of words, because without words we cannot express our ideas, but what matters most is how he helped me build my vocabulary. He told me to write with the very common words, saying “The closer the words are to your

    life; the more likely you are to take hold of them.” In his

    classroom, he used a unique way to let me find the best descriptive word for myself. E.g. leaving me time to list appropriate nouns, verbs, and adjectives for some specific topic like hiking, swimming and so on. Then let me use these words to create phrases and then use the phrases to produce the sentences, and...

    2. Ideas second, helped me form the main theme by saying, “at

    the beginning, say what you are going to say, then say it, and last say what you’ve said. Oh, how simple it is!

    3. Language structure third, namely, sentences used to start an essay, to keep going and to end it, e.g. start an essay,’ There

    are many effective ways to master a foreign language, but I’ll

    only talk about three…’ then brief the three ways in the next

    paragraph. And then three more paragraphs about the details of the three ways, and last summarize what you’ve basically

    said.

    Share your ideas by contacting me at youredgar@yahoo.com