Level III
Chapter 1
Writing
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Language Section
IC3, IT, TOEFL, Best Answer
English | Vietnamese | Persian | Spanish
Assessment

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Topic: Identity / Bản sắc
Guiding Question: Who in the world am I? |
Câu hỏi hướng dẫn: Tôi là ai trong thế giới này? |
Introductory Motivation and Focus:
In small groups, look at the portraits below. The first picture is a photograph of the person in the painting. Talk about the two portraits by describing the person in the picture. Use all the vocabulary that you know for describing faces. Be aware of the words in English that you do not know. Share with your group the words that you do know.
Then, talk about the two pictures by comparing them. What characteristics did the artist show in the painting? Did the artist create a likeness to the individual in the photograph? Then read the passage below.
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Self Portrait: Black Eyebrows
I am a teacher and an artist. I like to help students see the world through new eyes. This means that I teach them to observe carefully and to see things for the first time.
Here you see two pictures of me. One is a photograph and one is a self-portrait. I painted this picture by looking into a mirror. I looked carefully for long periods of time. I enjoyed making this painting.
I can describe myself in writing, too: I have thick, black eyebrows. People often notice this about me. My eyes are brown. My hair is also brown. Smiles come easily to my face. My teeth are straight and strong. I am average by Western standards: my height, my weight, and the length of my nose. By Asian standards I am tall, large and have a big nose. My hair is cut short because I don’t like to take time to care for it. My style of dress is casual, but
artistic. I wear clothes for comfort and I like clothes made with handiwork. Also, for reasons of comfort, I wear flat shoes. I look calm on the outside, but inside, I hide a lot of nervousness, worry and creative energy. I am very creative, so there are many things happening in my mind.
Vocabulary: Look at yourself for a long time in the mirror. (Look to appendix for more words)
1) Describe your hair: __________________________________________
very short bleached brown or medium cut |
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pulled back
medium cut |
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long short
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bald |
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crew cut |
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frizzy
light brown |
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strawberry
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black
pulled back |
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braided |
braided |
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long |
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short |
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short
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2) Describe your eyes: __________________________________________
Slant of Eyes
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Size of Iris |
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Eyes slant up |
Eyes Slant down |
small iris |
large iris |
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Space Between the Eyes |
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Set of the Eyes |
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Close together |
far apart |
deep set eyes |
protruding eyes |
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Almond eyes |
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Evenly spaced eyes |
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Oriental eyes |
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prominent eyes |
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Droopy eyes |
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pupil |
black |
round |
narrow |
bare |
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iris |
brown |
bright |
sparkling |
twinkling |
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white of the eye |
blue |
bloodshot |
bare |
tired |
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eye lid |
gray |
droopy eye lids |
sad |
squinted |
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eye lashes |
hazel |
long lashed |
short lashed |
thick lashed |
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the crease of the eye |
green |
Western eyes (eyelid shows) |
Asian eyes |
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eyebrow |
clear |
intense |
(hidden eyelid) |
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laugh lines |
to blink |
teary-eyed |
wears glasses |
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to cry |
watery-eyed |
wears contacts |
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perfect eyesight |
near-sighted |
far-sighted |
twenty-twenty vision |
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Flat Eyebrows |
Curved Eyebrows |
Arched Eyebrows |
http://face-and-emotion.com/dataface/visage/visage_forehead.jsp
3) Describe your mouth: ________________________________
large |
toothy |
straight teeth |
lips |
smile |
small |
voluptuous |
crooked teeth |
teeth |
grin |
thin-lipped |
moustache |
pointed teeth |
gums |
frown |
full-lipped |
beard |
flat teeth |
tongue |
wears a smile |
tight-lipped |
wide-mouthed |
chapped lips |
braces |
has a smile |
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overbite |
under bite |
dimple in the chin |
dimples & |
4) Describe your nose: ________________________________
wide |
narrow |
flat |
Roman |
hooked |
flared nostrils |
pug |
turned up |
freckled |
straight |
bridge of nose |
snooty |
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turned-up noses |
no bridge |
bridge |
Roman nose straight nose |
5) Describe the shape of your face:________________________________
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http://www.eyebrowz.com/faceshape.htm
narrow/thin |
firm jaw |
high cheekbones |
wide forehead |
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broad |
square chin |
dimpled chin |
chiseled features |
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pointed chin |
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6) What do people see or remember about you? ________________________________
7) How does your personality show in your appearance? ________________________________
slender |
slim |
gentle |
kind |
formal |
skinny |
clumsy |
honest |
faithful |
casual |
heavy |
overweight |
jolly |
loyal |
courteous |
fat |
average |
curious |
jovial |
glamorous |
well-built |
curvy |
interested |
confident |
sloppy |
muscular |
posture |
shy |
timid |
adventurous |
overt |
serious |
nervous |
quick |
dull |
Answer the following questions about yourself. You may discuss this in small groups or with a partner, or you may write down your answers. You write or speak about this to become aware of how clearly and deeply you can describe yourself. Do you have the vocabulary? Are you able to speak from your heart or are you merely repeating answers you have memorized in the past?
- What’s your name?
- What does your face look like? (use the vocabulary lists above)
- Describe your physical structure.
- Who do you look like? Who looks like you?
- Where are you from?
- How old are you?
- What work do you do? Or what do you study?
- Do you enjoy your work or your field of study?
- How do you spend your free time?
- What do you like about your life?
- What don’t you like about your life?
- Describe your personality.
Introduction to Writing Skills: Writing Process Overview
The Writing Process: How Do We Write?
Writing is process. What does this mean? This means that what we write transforms. Our first ideas and sentences that are written down are not the final product. We do not write exactly what we want the first time. Rather, these ideas and sentences will undergo change and transform and a piece of writing will develop and evolve. In IC3 we will be developing Seven Steps in this process.
The Writing Process in Seven Steps
Step One: Exploration and Discovery
The ideas that we write need to come from somewhere.
- Explore what you already know
- Create and generate new ideas
- Read and research for ideas
- Get the ideas down on paper
- Build vocabulary
Step Two: Generating Ideas
Then we must ask:
- What is the purpose for writing?
- Who will read it? Who is the Audience?
- What form will the writing take? A narrative? An essay? A journal entry? A research paper?
- With what style do we write?
- What research and thought processes must take place?
Strategies for generating the ideas :
- Ask more critical questions
- Freewrite and brainstorm (writing down ideas without worry of grammar and spelling)
- Map and cluster (invent and organize ideas in a way that relationships and processes can be visually explored)
- Keep a journal (write personal explorations and reflections on ideas)
Step Three: Organizing the Ideas
Develop organizational skills
- Conduct Research
- Narrow the topic
- Identify the main idea
- Develop the thesis
- Organize the ideas
- Select and limit the information in a paragraph
- Select the type of paragraph: different types of paragraphs serve different purposes
Organizing Strategies: Create an Outline that includes
I. Introduction
A. Set the Context
B. Explain why the topic is important
C. State the thesis
II. Body
A. Builds points
B. Develops ideas
C. Supports the main claim
III. Conclusion
A. Reemphasize the main idea
B. Restate the thesis
Step Four: Composing
Write the first draft.
- Write by balancing the natural flow of ideas with the organization you’ve outlined
- Develop cohesion and style: develop grammatical and lexical skills that serve to unify paragraphs.
- Find the right words
- Connect and transition the ideas
- Using correct form: practice with the mechanics of writing
- Spelling
- Punctuation and capitalization
Step Five: Edit and Revise
Analyze and Review
- Analyze the organization of your ideas and sentences
- Clear thesis?
- Clear communication of ideas?
- Logical organization of ideas?
- Does the information support the main idea?
Reviewing strategies
- Refocus
- Reorder
- Add
- Omit
Step Six: Edit and Proofread
Proofread
- Paragraph structure?
- Check the cohesion and style
- Conclusion restates the thesis and overviews the main ideas?
- Does the paper appear professional?
- Are there spelling or punctuation corrections needed?
- Is sentence structure correct?
- Are sentences clear and easy to read?
Proofread Strategies
- Run spell and grammar check on the computer (but remember that you are smarter than the computer)
- Read your paper aloud
- Ask a classmate or friend to read your paper
- Talk to your teacher
Step Seven: Write a Second Draft for Teacher Evaluation

Writing Assignment:
By looking in a mirror or a photograph of yourself, you will write about your appearance and about yourself. You will follow some of the nine steps introduced above: You will generate ideas with freewriting. Then you will organize some of these ideas into paragraphs. In this chapter, we introduce to you one way of writing your ideas called “Freewriting.” Here is an overview and guide to a freewriting assignment:
Freewriting
Freewriting is writing down ideas that are circling in your brain. Freewriting is free of rules and styles and should be thought of as a personal tool to help a person to write, record ideas, and unburden oneself of emotions. There was a time when freewriting was used and looked at only by the writer, but in this new age of computers, freewriting takes on other tasks of importance.
As we rely on computers and communication with email, being able to freewrite becomes an essential tool for our daily lives. We use email correspondence to communicate immediately and often our response is to quickly write and send messages. Therefore, it is important that we learn to write clearly in a prompt response. In this text, you often will be asked to correspond by computer, therefore practice in freewriting will be an asset to learning the English language. This means that thinking in English rather than translating from your first language into English should be a skill learned more rapidly than before. The best way to learn to freewrite is to write and write and write.
Before computer correspondence, freewriting was a skill to help generate ideas for writing essays and other compositions. Sometimes this is called “brainstorming.” Of course, it still is a good tool and useful way to discover your ideas. Often when a person is full of emotion, writing down all these feelings can help to get your ideas into a form you can see and organize. This often helps people psychologically. Most diaries and journals are written in a freewriting style. Some people feel the need to freewrite often in order to get their feelings and ideas down quickly.
For academic writing purposes, go through the following steps: Concentrate on an idea for a topic. Don’t stop to think about how good it is or whether you can actually apply it to the topic. Instead, write the idea down before you forget it and try to form another idea. When you get used to freewriting, you may find that you have to write very quickly because you will have a lot of ideas at once. This is good. Focus on getting everything you think of written down. Do not focus on how useful each idea is.
Exercises and Activities for Developing Content of Student Writing:
Now practice freewriting . Look in the mirror. Write down whatever comes to mind when you see your own image. Are you short or tall? Left-handed or right-handed? What do you like to do? Do you look like a teacher, farmer, nurse, etc.? Do your eyes twinkle? Think of as many things as you can. Write them all down as quickly as you can. Don’t think about whether or not you want to write about it. You can worry about that later. For now, just write down your ideas.
Exercises and Activities for Building Skills:
Correct this paragraph using the rules for the form of sentences and paragraphs in the box above:
- meet the new english teacher
- melinda newman has come to our campus to teach English to first and second year English majors. she is a forty-year old woman from chicago illinois in the united states
- she is very unusual on our campus because she has red hair and blue eyes She stands 192 cm tall. she will be an outstanding teacher in more ways than one. welcome her to our campus
Exercises and Activities for Incorporating Skills into Student Writing:
Cohesion and Style
A well-written paragraph has cohesion. Cohesion is the “glue” of a paragraph; that is, it connects the ideas in a paragraph. A good writer writes in such a way that their paragraphs are easy and clear to read with cohesion and style.
Let us consider cohesion and style when editing the first draft of your writing.
- A cohesive paragraph has correct verb tenses.
- Good grammar and rich vocabulary improve the style of a paragraph.
- Special words such as and, but, so and also connect your ideas.
Using “And”: When you have two verb phrases about the same subject, you can connect the phrases with and.
Example:
I am a teacher |
I am an artist. |
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I am a teacher and an artist. |
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Example:
I teach students to observe carefully. |
I teach students to see things for the first time. |
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I teach students to observe carefully and to see things for the first time. |
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1. Connect these phrases with and:
eyes are black |
hair is black |
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a._______________________________________________________________________ |
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teeth are straight |
teeth are strong |
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b._______________________________________________________________________ |
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height is standard |
weight is standard |
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c._______________________________________________________________________ |
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2. Now find some phrases in your paragraph that you can connect with and. Be sure they refer to the same subject.
Using “Also”: Use also when two sentences have similar ideas. Also is used in the second sentence, usually before the main verb in the sentence, but after the verb “be.”
Example: My eyes are brown. My hair is also brown.
Example: She is intelligent. She is also beautiful.
3. Use “also” in the following sentences:
He is a good father. |
He is a good husband. |
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a._______________________________________________________________________ |
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She likes to wear silk dresses. |
She likes to wear high heeled shoes. |
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b._______________________________________________________________________ |
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He likes to play soccer in his free time. |
He likes to read. |
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c._______________________________________________________________________ |
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4 . Now find some sentences in your paragraph that you can add also to. Be sure that the sentences have similar ideas.
Using “And, But” and “So”: By placing a comma (,) before and, but, or so, you can connect two complete sentences.
“And” is used to add more information:
Example: I wear clothes for comfort, and I like clothes made with handiwork.
“But” is used to contrast one piece of information to another.
Example: My style of dress is casual, but artistic.
Example: I am average by Western standards, but I am big by Vietnamese standards.
“So” is used when showing a result”
Example: I am very creative, so many things are happening in my mind.
5. Use “and, but,” and “so” to connect these sentences:
He is a farmer. |
He has strong hands. |
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a._______________________________________________________________________ |
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She is very young. |
Her skin is very soft. |
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b._______________________________________________________________________ |
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Her parents are tall. |
She is short. |
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c._______________________________________________________________________ |
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He is very tall. |
He moves very quickly. |
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d._______________________________________________________________________ |
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She has blonde hair. |
Her eyes are blue. |
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e._______________________________________________________________________ |
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6. Are there sentences in your paragraph that can be connected with and, but and so?
Writing First Draft:
Organizing Ideas . After you have written down everything you can think of, organize your ideas. Sometimes we organize by putting ideas into categories such as people’s appearances (face, nose, eyes, and moustache), free time activities, characteristics, and behaviors.
Put your ideas into categories. This is also a time when you can start to edit your ideas. If one idea does not seem to fit with any other ideas, you can get rid of it or try to think of other ideas to go along with it. You can also use the vocabulary list to think of more ideas.
Writing Sentences. The next step is to make sentences for every one or two of your ideas. These can be simple sentences, or you can make them more complex. Here are some examples:
I am tall. My hair is short and curly. I am 22 years old, and I am in my third year of college. Fish is my favorite food. I am shy. I study computer. I don’t look like anyone in my family. I like to wear earth-tone colors. I don’t like to attract attention But having red hair attracts attention. Being tall attracts attention. |
Try to vary your sentence structure so your sentences do not all sound the same.
Organizing Sentences. Now put your sentences in order. You may choose to describe yourself from head to foot, or you may choose to describe yourself by what catches someone’s eye first (for example, dark eyebrows, unmanageable hair, or great height). Another way to order your sentences may be from general to specific: describe your general appearance, then go into detail.
Look back at the beginning of this chapter to get some ideas. The paragraphs in the writing piece are ordered in this way:
- Paragraph 1: the writer describes occupation and a bit about her personality in relation to that occupation.
- Paragraph 2: introduction to a physical and personality description through art.
- Paragraph 3: describing physical appearance by most noticeable feature and detail. Then the paragraph moves from the face to more general physical description and ends with some description about how her appearance is part of her personality.
You will focus on writing one paragraph that will look more like Paragraph 3. The sentences written above may begin to form a paragraph like this:
When you have organized these sentences, follow the “Rules for Form of Sentences and Paragraphs” above.
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Sometimes I wish that I am invisible because I am very shy. But it is hard to be invisible when people see how tall I am . My short , red, curly hair attracts a lot of attention. I just want to quietly study computer and hope that no one notices me. But I enjoy life. I wear my most comfortable clothes and I can spend hours absorbed in my work at the computer. My field of study has opened new worlds to me and I like that. |
Editing Process and Exercises:
Now edit your first draft by answering these questions:
- Is your paragraph cohesive with correct verb tenses?
- Have you followed the correct form for sentences and paragraphs?
- Have you connected your ideas with “and, but, so,” and “also” to make a cohesive paragraph?
Writing Second/Final Draft:
Rewrite your paragraph neatly. Use good grammar and correct form. Read it out loud to yourself, then have a classmate read it. Turn the final draft into your teacher.
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Write an essay about how the identities of students across the world are both similar and different. After you have read about Nguyễn Chí Hiếu and all of his academic success (in the Reading Book, Chapter 1), how are his experiences similar with your experiences? Write generally about similarities between your experiences as a student and, based on things that you have read and discussions you have had with others, the experiences of your global colleagues.











































