WRITING

Writing about Personal Experience

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Writing a Personal Experience Essay

Pre-writing

Choose one experience from your life that is interesting enough to be told.

Introduction

Think of an introduction that will make the reader eager to know more about the experience.

Body

Use simple past or past continuous tense. If something happened previous to the personal experience, use past perfect.
Write down some quick notes about the experience.
Don't worry about grammar. Take five minutes at the end to proofread your essay.
Remember every detail and try to visualize it.

• Your feelings
• Your thoughts
• Objects around you (their shape, color, size, ...)
• The smell
• The taste
• Actions

Include the setting: place, time. (Give specific details about the place and the time.)
Tell the events:

• in chronological order
• or using a flash back technique (depicting / recalling a set of events that occurred before the scenes immediately proceeding)

Conclusion

Conclude by telling what you learned from the experience.

Post writing

Edit your essay.

Writing a Cause and Effect Paragraph

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How to write a cause and effect paragraph

What makes something happen is called a cause. An effect is what happens as a result of the cause. Here are a few basics on writing a coherent cause and effect paragraph.

Pre-writing

Decide whether to write about a cause or an effect or both. You can choose to discuss only the causes or only the effects of an event. Alternatively, you can discuss the causes AND effects of a certain event.
Make a list of causes or effects. Then narrow down that list to include only the most important causes or effects.

Writing

Write a draft explaining each cause or effect in the paragraph in as much detail as possible. and don't forget to use transitional words in your paragraph, such as: also, as a result, because, first and finally.
It is very important to include in your paragraph a clear topic sentence. This sentence should state the main idea of your paragraph.
Support your topic sentence with supporting details.

Post writing

Edit your paragraph.

Writing a Descriptive Essay

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Writing a descriptive essay

Learn to write a descriptive essay.

Pre-writing

Write down notes
Try to be specific
Remember things we describe are what we

• feel: happy, angry, cold, hot ...
• see: big, large, small, tiny ...
• touch: coarse, hard, soft, smooth ...
• taste: sweet, sore, bitter,
• hear: loud, quiet, silent ...
• smell: bad, moldy, unpleasant, pleasant ...

Describe your feelings, your thoughts, your actions, ...

Writing:

You can organize your description:

• from general to specific or vice versa
• from the outside to the inside or vice versa
• from the least important to the most important or vice versa
• from the start (e.g. of a journey) till the end ...

Post writing

Edit your essay

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Book / Film Review

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Writing a book/film review

Follow these steps to write a book or film review.

Pre writing

Remember and take notes of the plot of the story. What impression did it produce on you?

Writing

• Introduction: give the title and author of the book. If you're reviewing a film mention the director or actors.
• Body:
  1. Summarize the plot in a few sentences.
  2. Mention the setting: the place and time of the plot.
  3. Say something about the main characters.
  4. Say something about the content.
• Conclusion:
  1. Comment on the book or film.
  2. Let others know whether or not you liked the book/film.
  3. Why do you like it? Why don't you like it?
  4. Is the author's style good or bad, is the book / film interesting or boring etc.
  5. Do you want to recommend the book/film?

Post writing

Edit your writing.

Useful Expressions:

  Title, Author / Director, Actors

The film is directed by
The film is produced by..
It is starred by...
The book is written by ...

Setting

The action takes place in ... (setting)
The action of the film is set in ...
The story takes place in...

Characters and Plot

The main characters are ...
The story is about ....
The novel tells the story of ...
In the course of the novel the action develops dramatically.
The novel / film begins with...
The novel has an unexpected ending.
The end of ... is ...

  Reaction  

I am impressed by
I think ....
The book is terribly / beautifully written
The film is terrible / exciting.
What surprised me is ...
What I liked is...
What I didn't like is...
I liked/didn't like the film / novel because ...

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