Hello everyone, welcome to our summer writing class.
I hope you will enjoy
the class and learn a lot about writing. First off, my name is Brendan Mc-
Gowan for some of you who may not know me.
Can you guess what country I am from?
Here are some ideas: Canada, Britain, Ireland, America, New Zealand, Aus-
tralia, or South Africa?
Where do I live now? It’s completely different than my home country.
How about you? I will ask you as many of you as I can about yourselves.
What’s your name? What city are you in right now?
Do you see how I phrase that? What city are you in right now? I write it that
way because some of you have gone back to your hometown for summer va-
cation to live with your grandma and grandpa. Also, there might even be stu-
dents from other countries who join us for our class. We have students from
France, USA, Germany, Japan, India, Australia, and Canada who join our
classes at NCSN. Very cool! (And they’re a lot of fun because we can learn in-
teresting things from them.)
OK, let’s start out with the formal or more serious first week of our course. I
will only give you the first two weeks because if I describe all ten weeks, it can
get boring for everyone! So, for tonight and next week, here is what we will
work on together.
Syllabus for a Basic Writing 10 Weeks Course
The goal for this course is to introduce students to and improve the skills of elemen-
tary school aged students who are in need of essential English writing skills for their
bilingual education requirements. Topics such as writing emails, writing book re-
ports, composing multi-paragraph essays to discuss literature, science topics, and
social studies topics are the main focus areas for the course.
Week 1-2: Introduction to Writing Skills
Introduction to the writing process
Understanding the purpose of writing
Basic grammar and sentence structure
To start with the writing process it’s best to use a picture to describe things. Writing is of-
ten about describing things in many different ways. You can describe your school, your
house, your friendships, your mom and dad or other family members. You can describe
food you eat, places you like to go, things you read about in books, computer games you like
to play, or classes at school you really enjoy. We will try many of these topics over the next
ten weeks, but first! We need about five important things to remember!
When you write a series of things for example: What are your favorite fruits? You can write,
“I like bananas, apples, strawberries, and so on.” etc. (et cetera) Please do not use this style:
I like bananas, apples, strawberries ... “ In school writing or academic writing, the dot dot
dot (. . .) style is not used. If you write this on a school paper in schools elsewhere in the
world like England or America, teacher will do this X the big red x! And minus
points. Dot dot dot is good for text messaging and social media, not for formal
writing. Why?
It’s too mysterious, too vague. (mơ hồ) It’s better to write, “I like
strawberries, bananas, and a few other fruits.” NO DOT DOT DOT!
Number Two: Try your very best not to use “you” in your writing.
This is unbelievably confusing. Students write: “We love to go to
the shopping mall. There are so many good things to buy. You
should see how great the books are there.” All-right, I don’t un-
derstand. The person started with “we” and I’m guessing that’s
either she and her sister or friends from school, but who is YOU?
Who are you talking too? Now, you might answer, “she’s talking
to you the reader!” But, wait, that’s already understood, that
someone is reading this paragraph, so why say, “You.” And some
students use it again and again and again. Let’s say you have a
friend named Peter, and you write, “Peter you should see this new
restaurant in my neighborhood. Peter, this is the best restaurant
ever, and Peter, they even have coconut pudding. But wait, Peter,
they also have chocolate pie. And guess what Peter, they also
have fried cheeseballs that are really cheap. You like cheap food,
right Peter?” WOW! Why so many Peters?!! It’s best not to use
YOU!
Number 3: Keep your verb tenses the same as much as possible.
Example:
I went to the store yesterday. I saw my best friend from school.
Her name is Betsy. She is the smartest person in school.” OK, do
you see how we changed from went, saw to is and is? We had to
do that to make the story’s grammar sound correct with two past
tense verbs and two present tense verbs.
What if a student wrote a paragraph like this:
I went to the store yesterday. I saw someone I like. It was my
friend Bill. I said “hello Bill” and he answered, “Great to see you
Minh!” Oh dear! These verbs are all mixed up. Can someone cor-
rect this for us? Thanks!
Number 4: Do not use AI like Chat GPT or Google to write your
work. This is so easy for teachers to see. Students give me papers
that have no mistakes, and the writing level is so advanced that
we can see a professional writer has written it! It’s so easy to
catch, everyone. Please do not do that! Thank you!
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All-right, let’s get ready for your first homework. Look at this pic-
ture, and describe what you see. This is the warming up part for
the one paragraph homework.
5-7 sentences is the goal!
Possible answers: The workers are working on a small wooden
house. There are eight workers, and they are wearing helmets.
The men are wearing yellow, white, and blue helmets. Two men
are standing on red ladders. They are wearing orange, black,
white, and other colored t-shirts. I think this must be hard work
for the men because it looks like it is summer time, and it is hot!
For lunch, they might eat salad and bread because it is very hot,
and hot food will make them feel hotter. Also, they are very tired
after working on this house all day.
How about this picture? What do you see?
The students in this bright classroom are raising their hands.
There are eight students that we can see in this class. The stu-
dents are wearing gray, blue, pink and other colored t-shirts. This
school does not seem to have uniforms. The kids can dress casu-
ally. They are studying biology because there is a picture of a hu-
man brain or tree behind them. Six of the students probably know
the correct answer, but two students are not raising their hands.
They should know the answer because tomorrow there is a test!
The students seem to like the class because almost everyone is
raising their hand. The picture isn’t really clear enough, but I think
it’s a rainy day.
9,397,302.25 Nine million, three hundred ninety seven thousand,
three hundred and two, and .25 DONG
And now, for your homework. Can you write at least five sen-
tences about what you see?
Oh my goodness!
There was a little girl who fell off her blue bike. She looked like she was
in a lot of pain. Luckily, her blue helmet protected her head from any se-
rious injuries. It seemed that the little girl was bleeding from her knee
because she was holding it tightly.
The girl’s father, a man wearing a gray suit and blue jeans, was very
surprised and scared when he saw his beloved daughter had an acci-
dent. He immediately asked if she was okay and took her to a nearby
clinic. After the examination, the doctor said she only had a minor injury
and needed to rest for a few days. The father was relieved and thanked
the doctor before they both went home.