Resources for writing 

Writing is very well served on the Web, as well as reading. There are many sites which provide worksheets and guided writing exercises for students, others provide a place for students to send their own writings or compositions, others are forums where to send messages on a certain topic. Our students can also contribute to magazines, chats, projects and so on. Some of those sites are complete courses with a tutor and instruction on how to write, while others are a collection of task-sheets or guided lessons to be used by the students in class or as self-study. Let's see some of the best sites aimed at helping students to improve their writing:  
 

instruction and writing tasks 

  • On- Line Writing Laboratory (OWL) provides worksheets and guided writing exercises for students. OWL contains a wide variety of documents, covering punctuation, sentence structure, typical errors, and has extensive examples of native- speaker usage. Consider OWL Handouts: An Outline of all the Documents a site which lists over 120 instructional handouts available on different categories, many of which are subdivided. I found the following categories the most interesting ones: General Writing Concerns , where students are guided on how to start writing, planning and developing an outline..., Parts of Speech , Punctuation and Spelling . These handouts offer some theory explanation as well as some practice. The site also offers other resources for teachers, with links to online journals, syllabi and assignments, general advice and to other writing Labs and Centres on the Web.

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  • The Rensselaer Writing Center . The goal of the Writing Center is to help students improve their writing by working with experienced instructors on academic, personal, and professional writing: essays, lab reports, research papers, business letters, summaries, cover letters, and so forth. In addition to instructors, the Writing Center offers many other useful resources. The best one is Online Help for Common Writing Assignments and Problems a selection of handouts available online which offer some instruction as well as some exercises to test students comprehension.

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  • UVic Online English Writing Course. This is the site of the University of Victoria English Language Centre Online English Writing Course, an intermediate writing course for ESL students. Students can use the materials of this course as long as they posses an ID and password for the course, a recent World Wide Web browser and e-mail address. There are several different kinds of exercises in this course: preparation and presentation exercises designed to teach the writing skills; handouts which offer extra help with important skills and ideas; practice pages with text boxes for the students to fill in and buttons to send the instructor the information students have entered (the instructor marks the work and gives feedback; editing pages which give practice in editing students work, correcting mistakes or adding punctuation and finally, assignments, which come at the end of each unit, and can be sent back, when completed, to the instructor via e-mail.
  • Guide to Grammar and Writing.  Prepared by Professor of English/Humanities Charles Darling for his English courses at Capital Community-Technical College, this is the perfect site to visit if your students need help for writing. It contains various sections: contents - a list of links to many writing related resources on the web, such as "Rules for comma usage", "Capitalization, and so on, important things to remember - such as "paragraph development", "coherence and transition", etc., grammar topics, quizzes and a lot more. The site is really useful.

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Publishing 

  • Ex*Change,  This site gives second language students the opportunity to express themselves using English in a variety of ways. It provides a forum for ESL students to submit articles they have written to editors for feedback and possible eventual publication on the Web. Students gain knowledge and insight about different cultures and can read writings of non-native English speakers from all over the world. There are three current sections aimed at publishing students writings: cookbook , contribute to finding delicious recipes from all over the world and find out what people in other parts of the world eat; world cultures, individuals share specific aspects of their culture: ceremonies, rituals, festivals, traditions... and stories, creative writing by individual and/or done in collaboration: short stories, poetry and other creative writings. I highly recommend this site. 

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  • Write Now (International House), a magazine for those interested in writing in English, and sharing thoughts with the rest of the world, with all the regular sections, as well as a crossword and pen pals looking for partners.

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  • KidPub Publishing, a site with different sections aimed at publishing students' stories: KidPub Schools, where classes publish their writing; Gary and Liz: Return to Gateway Mansion, a never ending story where students can add a new paragraph; The Story Form an easy way to submit a story where students only need to fill in the blanks.

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  • PIZZAZ! PIZZAZ! is dedicated to providing creative writing activities and copyable (yes, copyable!) handouts for use with students of all ages. Poems, tongue twisters, chain stories, mystery stories, composition and other teachers resources are available in this site. Permission is given to use these resources for in-class, non-profit use only.

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  • to find out more about journals where students can publish their writing go to electronic journals, and read journals for students. 
Writing can also be practised in any communicative or collaborative activity by writing and sending messages via email or via web mail, participating in a chat, newsgroups, distribution lists and in any kind of project. For more information about this, visit communicating with others. To begin with, there are some of the sites listed in General sites  which give students the opportunity to write short or long messages which can be read by anybody interested in a topic. See for example ESL Message Exchange where you can discuss a variety of topics with students and teachers from around the globe or the ESL Discussion Center , a series of discussion forums which allow students and teachers to discuss a variety of topics in Dave Sperling's ESL cafe. Visit also the discussion center in Its- online. 

 I finally recommend you to read a paper by John Wong, "Communicating via Personal Homepages and Email: the New Foreign Language Classroom" which discusses how the web and e-mail are incorporated in the classroom to help students practise their writing and reading skills. The creation of student home pages on the web is used by students to practise writing "argumentative essays" for a large audience and to invite responses to their writing.  

Go back to links for teachers 
 
 please, report dead links to  dpermany@pie.xtec.e