Michelle's independent resources for ESL Students at Vancouver Community College

This is a Canadian ESL blog for Intermediate and Advanced Students who want to learn and improve their English. Each PAGE above contains thousands of free English lessons, tutorials and practice exercises to help you learn and improve your English grammar, reading, listening, pronunciation, speaking, writing and editing. Some of the resources are Canadian. Others are from around the world.

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Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Writing: Signs of Spring in Vancouver

I love living in Vancouver!  Where else in Canada can you see signs of spring in early March? Although we still have snow on the mountains, snowdrops and crocuses have joyfully begun to stick their heads out of the ground down in the city itself. People have begun to exchange their winter jackets, for heavy sweaters and vests. Everywhere you go, you see people smiling, yet another sign that spring is well on its way. Winter rains do not bring out smiles. However, cool, but sunny spring-like days do. Of course, this is Vancouver. We will get a lot more rain before we get the constant bright sunny days that make this city such a desirable spot to live in. 

But, let's face it. There is nothing quite like walking out your front door and seeing those dainty, bright purple and yellow flowers waving their tiny buds in the breeze. Just seeing them, brings such as feeling of  hope, and a sense of rebirth and renewal. Everything seems possible in the spring. No wonder you see so many smiles.  

 Keep a Writing Journal 
 One way to improve your English writing is to write in a daily journal. Limit your writing time to five or ten minutes only. Do NOT go back and reread, or edit while you are writing. Keep your pen on the paper and keep moving forward. At the end of the ten minutes, you can go back and edit, or revise. Even better, save the editing until the next day when you can look at what you have written with a fresh eye.

Writing for 5 or 10 minutes every day will help you build your fluency and comfort with writing in English. It will help you remove your fear of a blank piece of paper, and give you more confidence about writing when you actually have to write for formal marks. It will also help you use some of the new vocabulary you are learning.  

Journal Writing Topics  
In my next few posts, I will suggest a series of topics you can write about. 

Here are two topics for today: 

1.   Do you like spring? What do you like 
      about it? How does it make you feel? 
      What can you see and do that you 
      can't  do at other times of the year?  

  2.  What is your favourite season? Why do you prefer that season over the other three? What can you see and do during this season  that you can't do or see in the other seasons?

Here are a few verbs you can use to write about things that happen in spring. You might have to look up the meaning of some of them. 


plant
melts
return
celebrate
wake up
sow
grow
warms
lay
sprout
hatch
thaws
bloom

 Also, here are a few sites you can go to find even more vocabulary you can use for spring.

Vocabulary and activities about spring
Spring flower pictures and vocabulary

Feel free to comment below. I enjoy reading what you have to say.


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