Thursday, December 15, 2016

My Life in Vietnam: Student Writing

(TESOL Ideas--Writing)

This is a writing project very similar to a couple of writing projects I've done before: Introduce Cambodia to the World, and A Day in the Life of a Cambodian Student.

I'm in a different country now--in Vietnam--and I decided to re-use this idea because it supplemented the textbook I was using.

I used this project to supplement the lesson from Life Intermediate Textbook lesson 3E What a Weekend! .  The production activity for that weekend was for the students to imagine that they had a blog, and to write an imaginary blog post.  I decided it would be more authentic for the students to actually write a real blog post for a real blog.

I created the blog: My Life in Vietnam--LINK HERE--and instructed the students to tell people from around the world what life would be like in Vietnam.



The assignment the students were give is on Google docs: docs, pub
I corrected the grammar and vocabulary on the students' writing, and the students were then instructed to compare their version with my corrected version as feedback.  (A technique suggested by Scott Thornbury in Beyond the Sentence)

Your mission is to describe what everyday life is like in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam.  You will be writing to people who have never been to Vietnam, and who don’t know what Vietnam is like.
Describe for them everything you can.  What does the city look like?  How does it sound?  How does it feel?  What kind of things do you see every day when you’re driving to work or school?
What is life like as a Vietnamese student?  What are the schools like?  How are the schools different from an American school?  What do the students have to do?
What is it like working in Vietnam?  How is a Vietnamese company different from an American company?
What do people do for fun in Vietnam?  Where do you go to meet your friends in Ho Chi Minh City?  What do you do?
These are just examples.  Write down anything that you think would be of interest to someone from outside of Vietnam.


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