Advanced English. 1&2 Medio. Creative Writing 1: Basic

Advanced English. 1&2 Medio. Creative Writing 1: Basics. 

This is the start of our (long) creative writing unit. In this unit you will learn the basics of writing, story telling, character development, plot structure, and many other things. At the end of this unit you will write your own story!

Here, we are reviewing the basics of writing in English. This is important to know so your story doesn´t have a lot of grammatical mistakes. 

1. Complete Sentences: I have noticed that several of you struggle writing complete sentences in English. You tend to write run-on sentences. Run-on sentences are where the sentence just goes on and on and on without stopping. You use commas instead of periods to stretch out a sentence longer than in needs to be. Commas are not always used to combine two sentences together in most cases. That is the job of conjunctions (and, but, or).

In English, complete sentences are very short. They contain a subject, a verb, and form a complete thought. Here are some examples of complete sentences in English:

• I ran. (I-subject ran-verb. complete thought.)
• I went to the store. (I -subject. went-verb. complete thought)
• I bought bread.  (I-subject. Bought-verb. complete thought)
• I don´t like cheese.  (I-subject. Like-verb. complete thought)
• Do you like cats? (You-subject. Like-verb. Complete thought)
• He is hiding. (He-subject. Is-verb. Complete thought)

2. Grammar: simple past, simple present, simple future. 

We already went over the simple past and simple present a little bit in class. Now we need to add the simple future! Similar to Spanish, the simple future can be made just by adding "will" (voy) to a simple present verb.

• simple past: I walked to the grocery store and bought some onions. 
• simple present: I walk to the grocery store and buy some onions. 
• simple future: I will walk to the grocery store and buy some onions. 

*Notice in the simple future you do not have to use "will" for both verbs (walk and buy). In English, we often omit repetitive words which is very different from Spanish where you have to say every single small word. When you put "will" with "walk" we already understand the sentence is in the future tense. Therefore, we don´t have to use "will" with "buy". 

More simple future tense examples:

• I will not see you next weekend. 
• He will come home on Monday. 
• You will not eat dinner at this restaurant?

**You can also contract "will not" into "won`t". This is called a contraction. You all are probably already familiar with contractions such as "don´t" (do not), "can´t" (can not), "I´ll" (I will), and my favorite, "y'all" (you all). You can find a list of MANY MORE English contractions with a quick google search! All these contractions mean the same thing as their original words, but it is quicker to say it as one word. 

3. Capitalize "I". When you say " "I am" or anything else that has the letter I by itself you must always, always, capitalize it. This is very different from Spanish. Some of you forget to capitalize it. Make sure you double check! You must also capitalize the I in "I'll".

4. Capitalize the first letter of a sentence. You must also not forget to capitalize every single first letter of a sentence. This is the same in English as it is in Spanish. Do not forget to do this!

5. Punctuation marks. Make sure you are ending your sentences with some kind of punctuation such as a period, question mark, or exclamation mark (.,?,!). Also remember, English does not have the upside ¿ or ¡ so do not put those at the beginning of your sentence, only at the end.

Assignment:

You will practice writing in English using your knowledge of punctuation, grammar, spelling, and conjugation. There will be 5 sentences that are written incorrectly. You must make the corrections to them. First, circle or highlight the incorrect parts of the sentence. Then, rewrite the sentence with the corrections. 

For example:

i walked to the grocery store tomorrow 

(In this sentence "i" is not capitalized. "Walked" is past tense but "tomorrow" indicates the simple future tense should be used instead of the simple past. Also, there is no punctuation mark at the end of the sentence.)

I will walk to the grocery store tomorrow. 
(You will then write the correct sentence under the incorrect one!)

If you have any questions or concerns please send me a message. 

1. i eat the leftovers tomorrow.  
2. How far away is this place
3. He runned to the store yesterday. 
4. she cant wait for her birthday?
5. do you want a bite of my food ill share!

This assignment is due Friday, June 5th. 

Our Zoom meetings are on Fridays at 12:30 PM. The ID is:108-637-564