Teaching English in Korea - ESL blog

Pen pals = audience for student writing

In Interactions 2, chapter 4 the writing task is to write a personal anecdote. Students begin by exchanging stories about experiences that taught them some sort of lesson, then read an example, then look at how to decide which details are worth including, and finally get to work on their own anecdotes. Of course, writing an anecdote for me isn't very inspiring when students could just tell me in person...

I sent students to ESL go.com's "say hi" forum to read some messages and find pen pals in other countries. Each student took a few minutes to read the introductions and find someone interesting. Now they have a more inspiring audience - an interesting person in another country - for their anecdotes.