1. WHAT MAKES A GOOD PIECE OF WRITING Ideas for improving your English compositions.

2. Items to grade compositions  Good grammar and spelling.  Good typography and presentation: organization of information in paragraphs and adequate indentation.  Varied, rich vocabulary.  Maturity and originality in ideas.  Comprehensibility.  To follow the instructions, if there were any.

3. Dictionary use  Try to see a word in its context. Don’t translate word by word.  http://www.wordreference.com/es/http://www.wordreference.com/es/  http://dictionary.cambridge.org/ Good for idioms. http://dictionary.cambridge.org/  DON’T EVER USE E-TRANSLATORS. The result is incomprehensible, you don’t learn anything and I won’t bother to correct them.

4. Your first compostion: advantages and disadvantages of…  E-books / traditional books.  Being famous.  Meeting friends in person / socializing on the Internet.  Having a boyfriend or girlfriend living away from you.  Online shopping.  Using a bike instead of a car when you move around town.

5. Elaboration of a draft  The draft is the first step in the elaboration of a written composition.  You should write ideas, not full sentences.  The structure should always be according to the paragraphs:  Paragraph 1: Introduction (generalization)  Paragraph 2: Advantages  P. 3: Disadvantages.  P.4: Conclusion and personal opinion.  There should be a column dedicated to the list of vocabulary you are going to get familiarized with:

6. Intolerable mistakes for the writing:  Wrong Plural / singular differentiation in the verb tenses: School violence take place in the classroom.  Plural in adjectives: This has horribles consequences.  Demonstratives: This situations make many people unhappy.  Indefinite determiners in the plural: I brought a books.  There is/ are: There is some people who think.  Subject omission: In the evening get my clothes and dress up.  Some irregular verbs: yesterday I gone to my grandma’s house.

7. Score markers for compositions

8. What should I do when I have my composition graded?  Should I only look at the mark?  What do the signs mean?  My holidays were very fantastic  Their names are Javi, Fran and Susan.  If we don’t going to the beach  And always see that remember because my father and brother emcampment ? the  In ^ first place  Should I repeat the composition incorporating all the corrected mistakes? were