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UNIVERSIDAD NACIONAL DE CHIMBORAZO

FACULTAD DE CIENCIAS DE LA SALUD

LANGUAGES CENTER

FORMATIVE RESEARCH

LEVEL: SIXTH SUBJECT: ENGLISH

DATE: TEACHER:

WRITING EXPRESSES WHO YOU ARE AS A PERSON.

Lcda. MERCEDES GALLEGOS

Dra. MARCELA SUÁREZ

RIOBAMBA - ECUADOR

2012 - 2013

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ACCEPTANCE NOTE

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LANGUAGE CENTER DELEGATE

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Place and date (day/, mm/ year) (Handing out date)

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INDEX

Page

Front………………………………………………………………………………… 1

Acceptance Note……………………………………………………………………. 2

Introduction……………………………………………………………………….... 4

Substantiation…………………………………………………………………….… 4

General Objective ………………………………………………………………….. 5

Specific Objectives ………………………………………………………………… 5

Survey ……………………………………………………………………………… 5

Before you start………………………………………………………………….... 6

Activities to be done…………………………………………………………….… 6

Picture it…………………………………………………………………………… 7

Imitation …………………………………………………………………………. 7

Free Write ………………………………………………………………………… 8

Avoidance ……………………………………………………………………..…. 8

How to make a short story …………………………………………............ …….. 9

Shuffle a Deck of Creative Writing Ideas…………………………………………. 10

Methodology………………………………………………………………………. 11

Conclusions ……………………………………………………………………….. 12

Recommendations ………………………………………………………………… 12

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INTRODUCTION

Learning to communicate in another language can be very difficult and frustrating at times,

but it can also be one of the most rewarding experiences of our life. Being able to

communicate in another language will open doors for you to experience a world of new

people, places and ideas in different sciences and topics. That means writing is a way to

communicate it involves communicating a message by making signs on a page. One of

major reason for writing is to explain something. And perhaps no explanations are more

demanding in terms of clear, precise language than those that give directions. We should be

able to form letters and words, to join these together to make sentences or a series of

sentences that link together and to communicate our message.

SUBSTANTIATION

Writing is the act or art or forming letters and characters on paper, wood, stone, or other

material for the purpose of recording the ideas which characters and words express, or of

communicating them to others by visible sings. Writing is the primary basis upon which

your work, your learning, in you intellect will be judged –in college, in the workplace, in

the community. It permits you to evaluate the adequacy of your argument when you want to

communicate your message or ideas. This skill means making a paragraph of a word using

letters, numbers, characters as well as writing materials such as pencil, paper or computer.

According to many writing was made as a means of communication from distance, and is

still used after the phone was invented.

The art of good writing is the art of good communication. This Formative Research Project

wants to improve writing skills students and become better communicators. To get this, we

can follow these steps: the first step to better writing is to make the writ ing easy and

entertaining to read. The second step to better writing is to have a good structure which

makes the writing easy to follow. The third step to better writing is to use vivid words

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which allow the reader to visualize what writer is trying to express. The fourth step to better

writing is to carefully follow proper rules of grammar and to perform careful editing.

The proposal activities in this project help to improve the writing skills students, they can

use them to describe personal events or experiences, or to build a short or large essay, or

describe short stories about different topics.

GENERAL OBJECTIVE

To help to our students to use their writing skill to communicate their thoughts and ideas.

SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES

To apply different strategies to improve writing skills of students.

To encourage to students to write about them each day.

SURVEY:

This is questionnaire about your writing habits

. Do you like write about your personal experiences?

Never ___ sometimes ____ frequently ____ always _____

. Do you prefer to write a poem or an essay?

Poem _____ essay ____

. Do you like describe the feelings from other people?

Never____ sometimes ______ frequently ____ always _____

. Do you like to write on Facebook or other social pages?

Never___ sometimes______ frequently_____ always ____

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Before you start

Instructions

Use the proposal activities when you know what level of your class about writing skill is,

you can find different activities to apply in a fun and entertaining way.

Activities to be done

Learn a few creative writing exercises to incorporate into your classroom to keep your

students interested in writing.

It's not always easy for teachers to come up with fresh ideas to keep their students

interested in writing. Most students do not want to write about how their summer vacation

went or write a poem about a specific season. These ideas are old and boring to them. Try

some of the following creative writing ideas with your students to expand their writing

skills.

Picture It

For this exercise, your students will need a picture. As the teacher, you could bring in one

picture to distribute to the entire class, or you could bring in several different pictures so

that each student has a different picture. You could also offer the option for students to

bring in their own pictures and then exchange them with other students. Once each student

has a picture, ask that he or she write a story describing what is taking place in the picture

as well as what happened before the picture was taken and what happened after the picture

was taken. This provides students with a good opportunity to test their short story writing

skills. Allow at least one class period for students to finish their story. This assignment

would work best if done overnight or over the course of a week of classes. Ask students to

volunteer to read their stories once the assignment is completed (this is especially amusing

if all students worked from the same pictures...the variety of stories and aspects is

fantastic!). As far as grading is concerned, of course critique grammar and spelling, but

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play close attention to the details of story telling. Suggest ideas for smoother transitions or

more intense plot lines. This exercise allows for a lot of creative freedom, but does not

expect students to start from scratch. Providing them with a visual starting point might be

better than requesting a short story from scratch. You might be surprised at how students

can get carried away with a story! Expect responses of varying lengths.

Imitation

For this exercise, provide students with a piece of poetry that you would like them to

imitate. The poetry could be of any length or style. Try to pick a style that your students

may have had trouble with in class, as imitating a style can help them understand it by

working through it. It is important that the students imitate the style and not the subject. For

example, if you chose the poem The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost, you would want

your students to replicate the style, rhyme scheme, and perhaps tone, but you would not

want them to reiterate the subject of the two roads. This exercise can be very difficult for

students, but it allows them to work from something instead of asking them to write a poem

of any style. Students can read their work out loud, or you could post them publicly

somewhere in the classroom. Students should be given at least one night to work on their

imitation piece.

Free Write

Free writing is a great exercise for students to use to produce writing ideas. Ask students to

write for at least twenty minutes straight, copying down as many thoughts as they can as

fast as they can. These thoughts don't need to be coherent or grammatically correct.

Students might enjoy reading their free writing examples afterward just to see how many

thoughts went through their heads in such a short amount of time. While this assignment

should not be graded for spelling or grammar, you could always use it as a starting point for

another creative writing exercise. For example, you could ask students to take one thought

from their free writing exercise and turn it into a poem. You could also pick a specific line

that you like from their free writing and ask them to use it as the first line in a short story.

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The more creative you are, the more likely that your students will follow your example.

Don't be afraid to join in on this activity with your students! It can be just as beneficial to

teachers as it is to students.

Avoidance

This exercise can be very frustrating for students, but also very humorous at the same time.

Create a list of at least fifteen words that students are not allowed to use while writing a

short story or poem. Use a wide variety of words. You could eliminate certain pronouns or

articles, or completely cut out all adverbs. Ask your students to help you create the list (but

don't fall into their trap if they try to suggest words they wouldn't normally use in the first

place!). Then, as an overnight assignment, have your students write their piece without

using any of the words on the list. You could also make this more difficult yet more

memorable by having students creative a collaborative piece on the spot. It's fun to watch

students come up with new ideas to replace the words they cannot use. Another fun idea

would be to separate the students into several groups and give each group a separate list of

words to avoid. When they finish their pieces, have the groups exchange their work and

then cross out any words that were "illegal" to the second group. Ask that group to then use

other words to fill in the gaps.

How to make a short story

Like many people, you may feel you have the Great American Novel in you, waiting to get

out; or at least the great American short story. How to start? The best way to start writing is

to start reading. What? I want to write you say!! Why should I waste time reading? It's a

good way to learn basic story structure. A good short story should have a beginning or

opening, middle or body, and an ending or resolution.

In the opening you introduce your main characters, and their reason for existing. You can

have one main character, or several. It all depends on the scope of your story. Give your

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reader a reason to care about what happens to these people. Whether they're nice or nasty,

good or evil makes little difference as long as you make them real. You can base your

characters on people you know, or make them up straight from your imagination.

Describe things such as what the weather is like, what your characters are wearing, what

they're thinking, what they look like. Make them seem real. Everyone reading the story

should be able to picture each character in his or her mind. Be descriptive of places

involved in your story as well. Just a word of caution, don't get so caught up in your

descriptions that your plot suffers. Keep the story moving.

The body of the story is where you begin to build towards the resolution. You need to set

things up that lead to the resolution. This is the plot. These are the bones, or underlying

structure of your story. Once you've established this framework you begin to flesh it out.

You've told us who the people in your story are, and why we should care about them, now

is where you need to tell us what is happening to them.

The resolution is where it should all come together. Whatever situation you have created

has to be resolved one way or another. Your main character should have some kind of a

change to be effective. He doesn't have to turn from a bad guy to a good guy or vice-versa,

as long as some kind of change has occurred. In life, every situation we are involved in

changes us, however imperceptible that change may be. It occurs nevertheless. There are

stories where the characters remain static, and come away feeling cheated. If a character is

the same person he or she was at the beginning, they are two dimensional, and I don't really

care about them. If Ebenezer Scrooge were the same miserly curmudgeon at the end of

Dickens's "A Christmas Carol" the story would not have captured our imaginations for over

a century.

Shuffle a Deck of Creative Writing Ideas

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Shuffle the deck and draw a card. Then follow the instructions you have put there.

Some example cards are:

1. Re-Seeing: Pick a scene from your fiction in progress (especially one you are not happy with)

Introduce an element that does not belong in this scene. (like an infant in a bar or an atheist in

church) Then look at how this would affect the behavior of the characters, the odd element would

not have to be the focal point, and maybe you will take it back out, but it might give you some new

ways to look at the scene you are having trouble with.

2. A widow finds a still -inflated balloon caught on a low-hanging tree branch. When she

untangles it, she sees a note inside the balloon, she pops the balloon and finds the note is

from a long-dead husband/lover. Write what the note says, and how she reacts then write

how the note got there.

3. You have been keeping a journal for years. You go back and look at some of the stuff

you previously wrote and find there are pages missing from 5 years ago. Can you remember

what would have been on those pages? What could have happened to those pages and why?

Write it.

4. Write about your day. Include the events, details, interactions and thoughts. Then write

about your day from the viewpoint of someone you interacted with. How does this change

the story? (This is particularly interesting if you had an altercation with someone.. putting

yourself in their shoes can help you not only with your feelings about the exchange, but

also with being able to put yourself in the shoes of your characters in your own writing.)

5. A young woman wakes up one day, calls in sick to work, packs her bags and starts

driving. Where is she going? Why? Create a back story to support this scenario and go into

the motivations for packing up and leaving everything behind.

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6. A man you pass everyday walking his dog always nods hello without ever looking up.

One day he does look up and you notice his jaw and lower part of his face are missing.

Write about how this happened.. injury? war? disease? When did this happen and how, and

how has this affected his life?

7. Write an article about the life of your next door neighbor. It should be intriguing and

compelling even if you only know a couple of facts about your neighbor. This isn't actually

supposed to be fiction so don't make it up.

8. Write a 1000 word short story, article or essay. Now rewrite it in 500 words, then in 250

words and one more time in 125 words. Keep paring it down until you have only the most

essential elements while keeping your focus clear and intact. What were the most important

details that remained?

9. Go to a public place and observe a couple or small group. Write down how they act and

create dialogue. Keeping the scene and descriptions the same, how many different

dialogues can you come up with for this same scene? Choose one of the dialogues and write

a back story. What are the hidden feelings in this situation?

10. To add depth to a character you have created in your latest work, put them in a situation

totally unrelated to your story. Write the scene .. you don't need to put this into your story,

it is only an exercise to illuminate new things about your character.. does your character do

anything unexpected? Do any of the new developments make your character more

interesting? If they do, then you might want to find a way to work this into your story.

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METHODOLOGY

To develop this project we can use Descriptive Methodology with the goal to describe the

state we find our students before to apply the activities and then to describe what is the

state of our students on writing skill after the apply the activities of the project.

The technique will be used to obtain outcomes is survey before and after to apply activities

of project.

CONCLUSIONS

They will be gotten after to apply the project.

RECOMMENDATIONS

They will be expressed after to apply the project.

Webgraphy

http://www.essortment.com/improve-writing-skills-writing-exercises-34649.html

http://silvatungfox.hubpages.com/hub/10-exercises-to-stimulate-your-writing-skills_