RESPONDING TO “A SCARY EXPERIENCE”

After going through the essay, I realized that the student has a problem in choosing the appropriate words to be used. For example, he should have used “a wonderful day” instead of “a nice and scary day”. Apparently, he was weak in using descriptive words or adjectives, despite being able to maintain the flow of the story. There was also wrong usage of idiom as it was directly translated from Chinese o English. However, this student was clear about his/ her topic or what he or she intended to write. Besides that, there were also some mechanical errors such as wrong usage of tenses and words missing in a sentence. For this student, I would prefer to use written comments regarding on his/ her work. This is because, according to the essay written by him/ her, the flow of the story is obvious and the student did had the introduction, rising action, climax and ending part although the conclusion was ended quite abruptly.

In order to improve his/ her writing, I would suggest peer edit whereby his/her work is shown to his peers before submitting them. Through this method, he/she will be able to identify similar problems and weaknesses in their own writing. They will also have a wider insights and directions of writing as they are exchanging ideas.

The most common error found in this essay is the wrong usage of adjectives. I will provide some activities that are related to adjectives. For instance, I will ask him/her to write me a short paragraph on describing something such as places, things, people and surroundings. Besides that, I will also let him/her to have some warm-up activities. Pictures will be shown to him/her and they will have to use the correct adjectives to describe it orally.

EXAMPLE:

1. Describe your best friend’s appearance in less than 50 words.                                                            
2. Imagine you are lost in a forest and the sky is getting dark. What do you think about your  surrounding? Describe it using proper words in less than 60 words.