Thesis Statement Partners

Level: Intermediate and above

Materials Needed: paper

Preparation: 

o   To teach students the rules of writing successful thesis statements, prepare a pair of good and bad thesis statements, each of which exemplifies a rule (see the sample thesis statements below). Put each thesis statement on a slip of paper. Make sure there is a slip for each student. You may need to increase the number of sample thesis statements according to the number of students you have.

o   Make copies of the rules and sample thesis statements for all students.     

Time: 20 minutes

Procedures:

-   Shuffle the slips of paper. Give the instructions:

“Here I have some sample thesis statements. Each thesis statement has a pair or two pairs, which are either the improved or the poor version.
 
Your task is to pick one thesis statement first. Then, you will find the pair or pairs of that thesis statement. When you find your partner, you will analyse them and decide which one is the good one and which one is the bad one. Then, you will come up with a rule explaining your sample thesis statements.”
 
-   Students pick a slip of paper and then mingle to find the student who has the pair of that thesis statement.  

-   When students find the pairs, they analyse their statements and decide which one is good and why.

-   Closely monitor the students at this stage and provide support if necessary.

-   When students come up with the rule, they write it on the board.

-   When all the rules are put on the board, go over them together with the class and make corrections if necessary.

-   Distribute each student the handout on which you have both the rules and the examples.

Variation:

-   If your students are not kinesthetic, you may prefer to ask students to do the same task on a worksheet.

Personal Comment:

-   Asking students figure out the rules of thesis statements rather than providing them with the rules is always much more helpful. What I have witnessed is that students tend not to forget the rules when they themselves figure them out.


This activity is from my book, The Activist. 

A Writing Activity: Big Numbers

The following is an activity from my activity book, The Activist, again (in the future, I will be sharing with you some activities other than the ones in my book). This game-like activity aims to raise students' awareness of the mistakes they commonly make in writing. I have benefited a lot from this activity whenever I conducted it in my classes. I hope you'll enjoy it...


Level: Pre-intermediate and above
Materials Needed: None
Preparation:
a.    Find two sample student paragraphs, which have both strong and weak points.Make sure these points are relevant to your students’ writing; for example, the mistakes in these paragraphs must be similar to those your students keep on making.
b.    Give feedback on these paragraphs with numbers instead of words; each number will signify a different point (see the sample paragraph in the attached worksheet below).
c.    Photocopy these paragraphs for each group before class.
Interaction Patterns: Group work, whole-class activity, individual work
Time: 50 minutes

Procedure:
-    Students work in groups of four.
-    Give each group a copy of the paragraphs.
-    Students read the paragraphs and try to figure out what each number signifies in terms of feedback.
-    After the groups decipher the coded feedback, elicit what each number signifies from the groups.
-    Ask students to select one of the paragraphs and improve it in the light of the numbered feedback.  

Variation:
•    For weaker students, you may give the list in the answer key in a jumbled order and ask students to match the answers with the numbers.

Personal Comment:
- Numbered feedback was something I was introduced to when I first started teaching at Bilkent University, School of English Language. I then adapted this useful feedback style into such a classroom activity and noticed that students enjoy decoding such feedback and learn a lot from giving feedback to these sample student paragraphs.