Writing about Culture and Community for English Language Learners

Throughout the process of preparing for a range of college assignments, students will receive instruction in skills and strategies in the following areas:

Writing Skills

A. Prewriting

• Understand assignment instructions, including audience, purpose, and format, and tone.
• Generate ideas from written and spoken texts on a topic related to culture and community, such as cultural values and beliefs, or First Nations, British Columbian, Canadian, and global cultures, history, and current events.
• Select and narrow a topic.
• Create an outline.

B. Writing

• Demonstrate mastery of writing skills and forms covered in the previous level.
• Develop and support one idea in a one- or two-paragraph composition.
• Write a topic sentence with a specific controlling idea.
• Express main ideas and support them with details.
• Provide accurate descriptions, comparisons, or accounts of events in a clear sequence.
• Write an appropriate concluding sentence.
• Use appropriate greeting and salutation in social messages.
• Use language and content appropriate and relevant to a given situation and audience.
• Demonstrate an emerging level of critical thinking by reflecting on a familiar and personally relevant topic or experience and by comparing it to other views on a similar topic.
• Use appropriate text organization and discourse markers to signal narration, description, or comparison/contrast.
• Create coherence within and between paragraphs using appropriate transition signals, pronoun references, conjunctions, and linking words and sentences.
• Use adequate range of vocabulary, idiomatic language, and cultural references appropriate to the context.

C. Revising

• Re-draft and revise with peer and instructor feedback.
• Proofread, edit and re-draft on own.

Accuracy

• Use the conventions of standard written English grammar for intra- and inter-clause accuracy.
• Follow academic writing conventions for organization and form.
• Use modals to express necessity, obligation, and advice.
• Use present, past, and perfect tenses appropriately to express opinions and discuss topics and events related to time.
• Use compound and some complex sentences with adequate control.

Study Skills

Take responsibility for:

• Attendance and punctuality
• Class work and assignments
• Participation and teamwork

Use common software to communicate and to complete information management tasks such as word processing assignments, sending emails, or signing in to an online learning management system.