WHAT MAKES A GOOD PIECE OF WRITING Ideas for improving your English compositions. 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. Dictionary use Try to see a word in its context. Don’t translate word by word. http://www.wordreference.com/es/ http://dictionary.cambridge.org/ Good for idioms. DON’T EVER USE E-TRANSLATORS. The result is incomprehensible, you don’t learn anything and I won’t bother to correct them. 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. 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: 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. Score markers for compositions 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 were Should I repeat the composition incorporating all the corrected mistakes?