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English Creative Writing Assignment:

You have finally been rescued from your island – OR – you died there and someone found your journal (Diary). Since we last discussed this 100 days have passed. You learned to survive but also to face new challenges. Your assignment for today is multi faceted:

1) Give a BRIEF description of how you arrived on the island and the people that are there with you.
2) Describe BRIEFLY the events of those first 14 days.
3) Give us an OVERVIEW of what happened during the 100 days since we last saw you. Explain the main problems and challenges and also how you overcame those new challenges.
4) Describe IN DETAIL the last 5 days before you were discovered or died and the first 5 days of being back in the REAL world. How have you managed to cope with the pressures of life, the media (newspapers / TV etc)
5) You have been offered a contract by a film studio to make a movie about your adventures. As part of the deal you are allowed to pick the actors who will play you and the other lead characters. Tell me who you would pick and why they would be good at playing your part in the movie. You also have to DRAW a detailed MAP of the island to show where things took place.
6) Now that you are back in the ‘real world’ what do you intend to do? Life can never be the same for you. The island has changed you. What now?

TOEFL practice essay ~ Iris 11

4. It has been said, "Not all learning takes place in the classroom." Compare and contrast knowledge gained from personal experience with knowledge gained from classroom instruction. In your opinion, which source is more important? Why?

It is in my humble understanding, that all learning definitely does not take place in the classrom.It is like everything else, just an opinion but it is mine and it is of course based upon my understanding.

Those who are more educated than us take the responsibility to prepare their students, even though they may have not so much to give, they still share. We are free to take all that we want and need but of course this is only the beggining. The teacher does not teach you how to distinguish wrong from right. They teach you the consequnces. They dont teach us how to behave they show us the ethics.We cannot learn in a classrom how to run a firm but we can know how it functions. They cant make us write a best seller but they can teach us the example of those before.

School is just the step towards your life. It is only the end of the beggining. It is all that you need to get all that you can. Grab knowledge, embrace intelligence from all those who are able to give it. Listen a lot but dont talk as much. Open your eyes but not your mouth. Succeed and one day people will look up to the knowledge you have.

How to write your BIBLIOGRAPHY

A bibliography or reference section is necessary for any research paper. Unfortunately, there are as many ways to write a bibliography as there are names for it. Here is the standard method.

Things You’ll Need:

• Report Covers
• Research Paper Manuals
• Bonded Paper
• Word-processing Software
  

Step 1: Create a page at the end of the paper. Call it either "Bibliography" or "Works Cited."

Step 2: List, alphabetically by author's last name, all the sources used in writing the paper.

Step 3: Write the last name of the author first, followed by a comma and his or her first name, followed by a period.

Step 4: Write the name of the book in italics, followed by a period. You can also underline the book title.

Step 5: Cite the name of an article, in quotation marks, in place of a book title. Then write the name of the journal or magazine from which it came (italicize the name or underline it). Include a volume number, if applicable.

Step 6: Write the name of the city in which the work was published, followed by a colon.

Step 7: Include the name of the publisher, followed by a comma.

Step 8: Conclude the entry with the date of publication, followed by a period.

Step 9: Number your bibliography page when adding numbers to your paper.

TIPS and WARNINGS:

• Buy a good writer's handbook that gives examples of research writing for your area of study: science, social science or humanities. Each discipline has its own format for bibliographies. Ask your instructor what method of citation he or she prefers.
• Cite material from the Web by following steps 3 to 5, above. Then add the following information: any version or file number, the date that the document was posted or last revised, the complete URL and the date you accessed the document (in parentheses).

How to REVISE your ROUGH DRAFT

Writing a rough draft helps you clarify your ideas for yourself. Revising a rough draft clarifies your ideas for others.

Things You’ll Need:

• Dictionaries
• Thesauri
• Red Pens
• Spiral Notebooks
  

Step 1: Make sure that the paper topic is focused and specific.

Step 2: Review the thesis statement. Is it clear and precise? Does it firmly establish the aim of the paper?

Step 3: Look at the individual paragraphs of the paper. Make sure the topic of each paragraph is clear and the paragraph's goal is accomplished. Give adequate examples, quotations and explanations to reinforce arguments.

Step 4: Ask yourself whether each paragraph is effective. If it is not, figure out why. If the paragraph is too short, perhaps it should be cut from the paper. If it's too long, maybe it needs to be reworked or split it into more than one paragraph.

Step 5: Number the paragraphs in order from weakest to strongest argument. The paper should build toward its conclusion and end strongly.

Step 6: Ask yourself whether the general purpose of the paper has been accomplished by the time you reach the end.

Step 7: Go back and look at the smaller, basic elements of the paper, such as grammar, style and syntax. Check for run-on sentences, sentence fragments and errors in grammar and spelling.

Step 8: Make sure paragraphs and sentences flow well. The transition from one paragraph to the next should be clear, yet fluid. Combine or shorten sentences when necessary.

Step 9: Find an alternate way of expressing any word or phrase that is overused. Use a thesaurus.

Step 10:Make sure all references to research materials are correctly cited.

TIPS and WARNINGS

• Write your revisions and corrections in a color that stands out, such as red or green.
• After revising the body of the paper, consider rewriting the opening and closing paragraphs so that they better reflect the content of the paper.
• Have someone else proofread your paper before you turn it in.

TOEFL practice essay ~ Xhoia 9B

"When people succeed in life, it is because of hard work. Being lucky has nothing to do with success in life." Do you agree or disagree with the quotation above? Use specific reasons and examples to explain your position.

We know that a lot of people succeed in life. Some say it’s because of work, some because of luck. Everybody is allowed to say what they think. We don’t really know the truth, but we can surely talk about our beliefs. A lot of people say that luck does not have to do with succeeding, but I don’t. I think that luck is a big part of succeeding. And that’s what I’m going to talk about…

I both disagree and agree with luck not having to do with success. I think luck has to do with success because there are people who win the lottery or have inherited something from someone else. That’s not working hard, or at least I don’t see it like that. As an example we can give Paris Hilton, the heiress of Hilton Hotels. She doesn’t appreciate the luck she has by working more, instead she spends the money without caring too much.

I also think sometimes luck does not have to do with success. This is what I think about working hard and learning in schools. It takes a lifetime to get a great job and to succeed at it. These are the people we see everyday, most of our parents have worked hard to give us the life we have now.

But some people can be lucky in work too. Here work is the big part but luck has its own part to play too. There are people that are very intelligent, work hard and even stay for hours after the time they are supposed to stay and do not take a promotion in two years of work. These are the unfortunate people, the ones that luck didn’t knock on their doors and help them until they were dead. On the other hand we have the lucky people who don’t even need diplomas and get two promotions in only a week. They can be very intelligent and hard-working but luck is part of their success too. We hear about them from our friends, parents, their society and lots of other people that talk about life things.

So these are the reasons that I think luck is also related with success. I do not think that work isn’t a part of it. Instead, I think it’s the biggest part of it. In conclusion I would like to say that everybody is free to have his own thoughts. And this essay is just my opinion and everybody has to have his own.

Xhoia has tried to express her opinion based upon her own and her families experiences. In places there is repetition and some rambling, however the essence is there.

Help for Writing an Essay

An essay can have many purposes, but the basic structure is the same no matter what. You may be writing an essay to argue for a particular point of view or to explain the steps necessary to complete a task.


Either way, your essay will have the same basic format.


If you follow a few simple steps, you will find that the essay almost writes itself. You will be responsible only for supplying ideas, which are the important part of the essay anyway.
Don't let the thought of putting pen to paper daunt you.


The following links provide EXCELLENT tutorials and help to guide you through the process (Plus the Basic Guide to Essay Writing - click on top graphic):

Kimberly Chapman Guide.

WRITING - HELP FILES

 

WORKS CITED

-- Need to know how to prepare a works cited list or use a quotation?  Check out these links:

• http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/557/09/ = How to format a citation for a webpage, e-mail, or other electronic source.

• http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/557/01/ = How to format your first page (including your name, the title of the work, etc.)

• http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/557/02/ = How to format a quotation in your text.

• http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/557/05/ = How to format footnotes or endnotes.

SIX-TRAIT WRITING TO IMPROVE YOUR WRITING

• Go to 6+1 TRAIT WRITING  for more information about trait writing. 

5-PARAGRAPH ESSAYS

You can also go to the links below for help with 5-paragraph essays:

• http://teenwriting.about.com/od/writingnonfiction/a/WritingEssays.htm --detailed information about what each paragraph should contain.

• http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Atrium/1437/ -- a good overview of essay writing

• http://www.gc.maricopa.edu/English/essay/table.html -- sample essay with explanations for each paragraph and its purpose

• http://depts.gallaudet.edu/EnglishWorks/writing/fiveparagraph.html -- a sample essay on movie going