Today you’ll learn how to give your writing thoughts wings like Thiago, the most recent Writing Wizard Winner!
Thiago is a very inspirational student from our course, as this podcast, with me, was the first time he’d spoken English with a native speaker!
Also, he is a self-taught learner! Thiago has never studied English in a classroom before.
He does, however, talk to himself in English as much as he can.
One way this amazing student immerses himself in English is listening to a podcast on his way to work, and then mimicking what he hears. Also, he summarizes what he listens to out loud.
Now that he is able to write an excellent essay, he must start timing himself.
The step that took the longest was brainstorming. In this step, as Thiago notes, you must write down enough ideas for each body paragraph, narrowing the narrative from the general to the specific.
Luckily, Thiago has 3 weeks before his exam. So, for about a week, he should only work on getting that brainstorm step to 5 minutes or less.
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The Writing Wizard question this month was:
As education budgets shrink, arts programs are often the first to be eliminated.
Why do you think these programs are cut?
What is your opinion on the issue?
The main reasons Thiago was the winner were his vocabulary and specific examples and details.
An example of Thiago’s high-scoring writing:
…eliminating traditional disciplines, such as math or history. For instance, my niece had her ballet classes suspended due to the so-called contingency of expenses.
This is a great example of adhering to one of our strategies for coming up with specific support, which is real people, real places, real times.
At another point in his essay, Thiago wrote:
A Stanford study demonstrated that children exposed to arts programs become more creative and productive adults, therefore reflecting in financial increase and happiness expansion.
As to how our student developed such amazing vocabulary:
- Uses thesaurus.com to find great synonyms.
- Keeps a vocab. notebook
- Listens to native podcasts for hours a day in whatever spare time he has, such as Radiolab, Freakonomics, Death Sex and Money and Note to Self.
- Watches TED Talks.
- Every day, uses new vocabulary when he’s talking to himself
Something that Thiago really likes doing is making up studies and creating strong ideas for his body paragraphs, giving wings to his thoughts.
Additionally, using the template with linking words from the course makes it impossible to not write a good essay!
What do you think of Thiago’s advice today?
Leave us a message in the comments section below!