1、Doctorate StudentsWriting/Speaking ClassWeek 7“Poem Exercise”“Common Mistakes”“Transitions”Poem ExerciseThe following poem was written by a 14 year old boy in the United States. Although it is relatively simple the meaning is extremely deep. Today I am going to give you several minutes to read the p

2、oem and then write about it. Following are several questions you can write about. You are not limited to these questions. Feel free to write about anything as long as it is related to this poem.Poem ExerciseWhat do you think is the main idea that the author wants to communicate?What feelings do you

3、have as you read this poem?Is this poem true for many people today?What do you think of this sentence, “What people want the most is what they cant have.”Common MistakesFor the rest of the semester we are going to spend some time each class looking at common mistakes that are made when writing in En

4、glish. We will be using examples from your homework assignments to help us improve our accuracy. The handout I have given you is a list of what I have found to be the most common mistakes among Chinese students. We will be using this the rest of the semester. Checking for mistakesWe have just looked

5、 at some of the most common mistakes that are made when writing in English. For the next exercise I want you to use this chart and read through your own 5-paragraph essay that you wrote for today. Can you find any grammar mistakes in your essay? If so, go ahead and change those mistakes. I will give

6、 you around 5 minutes to look through your essay checking for mistakes. TransitionsToday we are going to look at different transitions that are very common in both spoken English as well as written English. The purpose is to expand your vocabulary in the words you use as well as help you be more fam

7、iliar with common words that are used in written English. TransitionsSpoken ExerciseI am going to hand out a slip of paper to each person. On this slip of paper are three of the transitions that we have looked at today. I want each of you to create three different sentences using the three transitions on your slip of paper.