Writing Book 1

Unit 1 − Getting started
Focus 1: Writing simple sentences
Focus 2: Understanding other common errors in sentences
● How to write correct sentences
● How to recognise, find and understand common errors in sentences

Unit 2 – Writing Better Sentences
Focus 1: Writing compound sentences
Focus 2: Writing complex sentences
● How to write compound sentences
● How to write complex sentences

Unit 3 – Writing paragraphs
Focus 1: What a paragraph in English should look like
Focus 2: Understanding what paragraphs are
● What a paragraph should look like
● How to organize your paragraphs

Unit 4 – Brainstorming
Focus 1: Brainstorming to get ideas for your writing
Focus 2: Developing your ideas
● How to create clusters and lists
● How to develop your ideas further

Unit 5 – Creating Surveys
Focus 1: Getting started with surveys
Focus 2: Creating good survey questions and answers
● How to choose question types to use in a survey
● How to write good questions for a survey

Unit 6 – Writing reports
Focus 1: Organizing your survey report
Focus 2: Explaining data and analysing results
● How to organize a research report
● How to explain research data

Unit 7 – Writing Reviews
Focus 1: Understanding reviews
Focus 2: Writing a review
● How to consider criteria for topics
● How to use adjectives and adverbs for explaining your thoughts
● How to write a review (giving your opinions)

Unit 8 – Writing About The Past
Focus 1: Using the past tenses when writing
Focus 2: Using time-sequence words in biographies
● How to use the simple past and the past continuous tense
● How to use time-sequence words
● How to write about an experience
● How to write a biography

Unit 9 – Writing About The Future
Focus 1: Writing about plans and ambitions
Focus 2: Writing predictions
● How to use the simple future tense
● How to express probability
● How to write about plans and ambitions
● How to write predictions

Unit 10 – Writing Narratives
Focus 1: Planning and creating a story
Focus 2: Making a story clearer and more interesting
● How to write a narrative
● How to organize information by time
● How to organize several paragraphs

Unit 11 – Writing Essays
Focus 1: Organizing essays
Focus 2: Pre-writing and peer editing
● What an essay is
● Prewriting skills
● Rewriting skills
● The importance of peer editing

Unit 12 – Publishing Yourself Online
Focus 1: Understanding blog sites and regular web sites
Focus 2: Creating a blog
● What blogs are and why people create them
● The difference between a blog and a regular web site
● How to plan, create and promote a blog

Appendix – Additional Material
Glossary of English grammar and writing terms

Week 1: Review (or Warm-up) and Focus 1

Task 1: Review
Students complete an exercise or discuss material and ideas from the previous unit (except for Unit 1 - Warm-up).

First half of the unit: Focus 1

Input material
Students are taught the main ideas or grammar points associated with the introductory phase of the unit.

Tasks 2-4
Students complete various tasks related to the input material to check their understanding.

Quiz 1
Students attempt an interactive multimedia quiz with feedback and scoring, either individually or in teams.

Week 2: Focus 2

Input material
Students are taught the main ideas or grammar points associated with the secondary phase of the unit.

Tasks 5-7 (or Tasks 5-8/Tasks 5-9)
Students complete various tasks related to further input material to check their understanding.

Quiz 2
Students attempt an interactive multimedia quiz with feedback and scoring, either individually or in teams.

 

Week 3: Follow-up (either in-class and/or by self-access)

Task 8 (or Task 9/Task 10)
Students complete a final writing assignment.

Exercises and test
Students complete additional tasks using the web site.

Unit 4 pages from the Writing Book 1 textbook

Click the picture of the book on the left to open and/or download a PDF file of Unit 4 from the textbook.

Extra material: Unit 2 Quiz 1

Click the stopwatch icon on the left to download a zip file containing a quiz from Unit 2 of the textbook.

Gary Ireland

Gary Ireland was born in Leicester, England. Having first visited Japan as a back-packer in 1986, Gary returned in 1988 and began to teach English at a language school. He taught at a wide variety of institutions before beginning to teach in college and university in 1993, and has taught at eight Tokyo colleges and universities since. Currently, he is a professor at a university in Tokyo. After graduating from university and before settling in Japan, Gary spent several years travelling around the world, and has continued to travel widely since moving to Japan. He has visited over 50 different countries in Asia, Europe, Africa, and Central America. Gary and Max created the idea for The English Course and set up The English Company in 2007.

Max Woollerton

Max Woollerton is also British. He came to Japan in 1987 and began teaching English at a private language school. Within six months, he had moved on to working in a vocational college and was the coordinator for a course on current issues and a course teaching English for Special Purposes. Between 1996 and 1999, he broadened his experience by teaching students of every age and level in a variety of institutions. Max began teaching in universities in 1999 and has taught at eight Tokyo universities as a part-time instructor. In 2004, Max gained a Master of Education degree at the University of Manchester (Education Technology and ELT Programme). Since 2012, he has been a full-time associate professor at Chuo University in Tokyo. In 2018-2019, he was a visiting researcher at the School of Education and Lifelong Learning at the University of East Anglia in the UK.