W: Other Writing Assignments

Let’s use this page to collect the Writing Assignments you wish to publish. At the end of the course, I’ll transfer them all to talkingpeople.net! Remember to include the info I include here, look:

(Thanks, María José, for starting this off! ❤ )

October Writing Assignment. Story telling in the third person

A Monumental Mistake
by María José López Béjar (C1, 2016-17) About 200 words

It was just a little mistake, but it changed María José’s life. She had been working in Walker’s for ten years. It was a family-run company that exported garden furnitures. She felt quite happy with her work. She got on really well with the owner, Donald Smith, but not with his wife, Mary. She was an aggressive, interfering, unpleasant, rude, uptight and loud woman that frequently showed up at the office and bullied workers for no reason.

Mrs Smith came in one afternoon while she was finishing a report. She looked at María José and said: “If I were you, I wouldn’t use that colour. It just doesn’t suit you”. She was wearing a new pink shirt that she very was fond of, and Mrs Smith’s comment highly bothered her.

María José typed a quick e-mail to Andrew Right, in the Sales Department: “Watch out! The old witch is around”, and clicked “send”. A few minutes later, she was surprised to receive an e-mail from Mr Smith asking her to go to his office immediately.

When she opened the door she looked at Mr Smith’s wife glaring at the computer screen. All of a sudden, she realised, to her horror, what she had done. She had pressed Smith instead of Right!

One hour later she was packing her belongings. She had been sacked!

The Path to Success
by Germán (C1, 2016-17) About 300 words

Have you ever been in a situation in which you fall into the same trap over and over again? You fight, try to improve and do your best but yet keep failing? It’s really frustrating and annoying and if you are a teenager it makes matters worse.

It was Name’s first year at secondary school. He had just finished primary school where he had been a brilliant pupil and his marks continued being really high at high school despite the fact that he had lost all his old fellow classmates and there were a lot of new changes to adapt to. However, there was a subject which was becoming more of an issue at that time.He had never got more than five or 6 out of ten in Physical Education and in the first term he had failed. Not only was he impressed by all the new physical exercises he was required to perform, but he was also starting to feel frightened.

For an obese 15-year-old boy like him, it was very difficult to climb up a suspended vertical rope – even with knots -, jump over a vaulting horse or do a decent headspring. Needless to say that there was no way for him to turn a back handspring or a somersault or jump over the plinth. And what is more, his new classmates were starting to have a go at him.

Summer came and he couldn’t make it – he didn’t get a pass mark in P.E. Fortunately, he reconsidered. He would change his mindset. He decided to get fit, so he went on a diet and enrolled in a gym. In September, back in school, he got a B plus!

The moral of the story is that everything is achievable if you train enough. Never set limits to yourself!

Attached Info on this Writing Assignment

Outline

Intro – Begin with a question to get the reader’s attention

Main body

• Tell the story in the 3rd person
• Past simple and past perfect
• Give all kinds of details: what happened, how he felt…
• Attention to paragraphing

Ending – the moral

Vocabulary

• to turn/do a cartwheel (lateral), somersault (without help), handspring (with your hands), headspring (with your head)
• front/back headspring, somersault…
• (vaulting) horse, trampoline. To jump over the vaulting horse…
• rope climbing: to climb up a rope (with knots)
• gymnastics equipment
• do gymnastics
• plinth, to jump on the plinth

Expressions

• Needless to say, …
• Set no limits to yourself
• To make matters worse,
• have a go at (sb): attack (sb) verbally