Some ideas to improve your writing

You should all have handed in the following compositions by now:
- About myself
- National stereotypes
-A joke
-An interview
Last Friday I set writing assignment number 5, the 'For and Against' composition on page 34 in your books. We also had an interesting class discussion about how to write better compositions. Here are some ideas that can help you:

1. Consider a writing assigment as a process: think about it carefully, note down ideas and words you want to use, write a first draft, enrich that draft, read it several times, correct it, write the final version and, finally, hand it in. Even when we write in our first language, we don't usually write good compositions
2. Sometimes, you'll need to do some research on the topic, particularly if it's something you don't know about. The Internet may be usefulf but don't copy and paste from the Internet, just read and get information
3. Before you hand your assignment in, it may be interesting to give it to a classmate to have a different opinion. You can swap writings and note down your opinion and some ideas to improve each other's composition
4. At this level, you need to move on and stay away from plain structures and vocabulary. A nice way to enrich your writing is to write down a list of vocabulary or expressions that are related to the topic and you've recently learnt and force youroself to use it.
5. Link words and connectors are essential to give your composition cohesion and to make it more sophisticated. Make sure you include a wide variety of connectors: it may be interesting to have a check list of connectors (for example, the ones on page 34 in your books) and, again, force yourself to use them. Introduce a variety of sentence adverbs to start some of  your senteces as well: anyway, apparently, gradually, ideally, in fact, obviously, eventually, basically...
6. Think about the register you want to use in your composition. Ask yourself if its a formal or informal text that you are writing: use formal vocabulary or more informal words according to the type of audience or to the type of text you are writing.
7. Reading a lot will eventually help you to write better compositions.