Corporación Universitaria del Caribe “CECAR”

Bachelor in Education
Teaching English as a Foreign Language
Subject: Writing Strategies in English
Writing and Essay and a News report
In this section you are going to plan, write, revise and edit an Essay and a News report on the
following Topic: 

¬ Describe two things that improved the quality of life in

your city or a city you know. ¬

- First Part: Writing Descriptive Paragraphs

1. Brainstorming: Think of a city you know well that is better to live in now than it used to be.
What was it like in the past? What is it like now? Think about architecture, environmental
issues, public transportation job opportunities, etc.

Complete the Chart with your ideas: 

City:

In the past: Today

2. Applying: Write about past conditions in the city you thought about in your brainstorming
notes. Write the affirmative sentences and two negative sentences. Use simple past and used
to.

Affirmative:

1.
2.
3.

Negative:

1.
2.

Author: Diana Margarita Araque

Adapted by: Rubén Mauricio Muñoz – Elsy Marina Cantor
 Corporación Universitaria del Caribe “CECAR”
Bachelor in Education
Teaching English as a Foreign Language
Subject: Writing Strategies in English
Writing and Essay and a News report

3. Planning: Follow the steps to make notes for your paragraphs

Step 1. Write the name of the city you are going to discuss in the chart below. Look at your
brainstorming notes and choose the most important things that make this city a better place to
live today. Write these two things in the outline.

Step 2. Complete the thesis statement in the outline

Step 3. Write topic sentences for each of your body paragraphs. In your topic sentences, use
the key words in the reasons that you circled in your thesis statement.

Step 4. Now write two (or more) examples or details for the supporting ideas in each body
paragraph.

Step 5. Think of some general information about your city where is it located? How many
people live there? What do most people know about there? Include this information in the
paragraphs to support your ideas.

4. Make a Draft: Complete the following chart with your ideas from the previous steps.

City:

Two things that make it a better place to live:

1.
2.

Thesis statement: The quality of life in _______________ is better today than it was in the
past because __________and___________.

Body paragraph 1: Topic sentence: _________________ is one thing that has improved life
in____________.

Supporting idea 1:

Supporting idea 2:

Supporting idea 3:

Author: Diana Margarita Araque

Adapted by: Rubén Mauricio Muñoz – Elsy Marina Cantor
 Corporación Universitaria del Caribe “CECAR”
Bachelor in Education
Teaching English as a Foreign Language
Subject: Writing Strategies in English
Writing and Essay and a News report

Body paragraph 2: Topic sentence: _________________ has also improved life

in____________.

Supporting idea 1:

Supporting idea 2:

Supporting idea 3:

Ideas for introduction:

5. Writing and revising: Use the previous draft to answer in the following chart the given
questions, and then revise you writing using the editing checklist below.

Author: Diana Margarita Araque

Adapted by: Rubén Mauricio Muñoz – Elsy Marina Cantor
 Corporación Universitaria del Caribe “CECAR”
Bachelor in Education
Teaching English as a Foreign Language
Subject: Writing Strategies in English
Writing and Essay and a News report

Editing Checklist YES NO

Are all the words spelled correctly?
Is the first word of every sentence capitalized?
Does every sentence end with the correct
punctuation?
Do your subjects and verbs agree?

Did you use the simple past and used to correctly?

Are other verb tenses correct?

6. Final Writing: Use the previous draft and to answer and the last chart, write your essay and
after that write your final essay in a blog of blogger with a minimal extension one and a half
page. Paste here the link of blogger of your essay. Chek it this manual of Blogger:
http://red.ilce.edu.mx/sitios/proyectos/voces_abuelos_pri13/manual_blogger.pdf

- Link blogger for your essay:

- Second Part: Writing a News Report

1. Check again your brainstorming activity and the first chart of your own ideas about improved
quality of life and write a news report. The following is an explanation of how to do it:

a) Choose the same topic of your city and the quality of life there.

b) The news report must be contained all its structure in a page of word.

c) Consider this model for writing it:

A News report structure

From https://www.vskills.in/certification/blog/structure-of-a-news-report/

A news report follows a pattern in reporting as well as editing. Every newspaper might
have its own style of writing, but a general format followed by all the newspapers at base levels
is systematically divided into several parts. Roughly speaking a news story structure follows 1-
2-3-4 steps, that is:

Author: Diana Margarita Araque

Adapted by: Rubén Mauricio Muñoz – Elsy Marina Cantor
 Corporación Universitaria del Caribe “CECAR”
Bachelor in Education
Teaching English as a Foreign Language
Subject: Writing Strategies in English
Writing and Essay and a News report
1. The lead. What is the most important news? How can you write it in the clearest way
and make it interesting too?

2. Elaborate on the lead. Two, three, four or five paragraphs that explain support and
amplify lead

3. Key background and context of event, if needed; information that helps readers
understands more about the news they are reading.

4. More elaboration of the news, in descending order of importance.

The main impetus lies in the body of the report. Once the introduction has been written,
there are rules that must be applied to any following paragraphs. Each following paragraph
should be about 30 words long which will help to present information in shorter doses and
maintain interest longer. Each paragraph should aim to be as independent of the other
paragraphs as far as possible (inverted pyramid structure). The journalist must present
information in descending order of importance. To get a deeper understanding, a news story or
report is divided into 5 parts namely;

 Headline – tells what the story is about

 Byline – shows who wrote the story

 Lead – tells the most important facts (5 W’s)

 Body – contains more information and details

 Ending – gives something to think about

* Here is a sample article which consists of all these parts for easy understanding:

 Headline – Train accident forces evacuation

 Byline – By M J Saleem

 Lead – The Banglore bound Muzaffarpur- Yesvantpur train derailed causing twenty
deaths on Thursday leading to the resignation of the Railway Minister.

 Body – Twenty persons were killed, and 33 others injured when 11 bogies of
Bangalore-bound Muzaffarpur- Yesvantpur Express derailed at Sitheri, about 90 km
from here, early this morning.

The derailment occurred around 5.50 am, a Railway official said.

Author: Diana Margarita Araque

Adapted by: Rubén Mauricio Muñoz – Elsy Marina Cantor
 Corporación Universitaria del Caribe “CECAR”
Bachelor in Education
Teaching English as a Foreign Language
Subject: Writing Strategies in English
Writing and Essay and a News report
Top officials of the Southern Railway visited the spot and commenced an initial probe
into the cause of the derailment.

 Ending – The number of recent train accidents have become a serious concern for the
government today. The government is planning some serious measures to avoid train
accidents.

d) Check the Invert Pyramid method for writing the most important information in your
news report:

Image 1: Invert Pyramid. From:

https://ohiostate.pressbooks.pub/app/uploads/sites/8/2016/09/image-1.jpeg

Author: Diana Margarita Araque

Adapted by: Rubén Mauricio Muñoz – Elsy Marina Cantor
 Corporación Universitaria del Caribe “CECAR”
Bachelor in Education
Teaching English as a Foreign Language
Subject: Writing Strategies in English
Writing and Essay and a News report
e) Design in Word or Power point your news report and save in PDF format or file. You can
check this example:

Image 2: Example of a News report. From:

https://dryuc24b85zbr.cloudfront.net/tes/resources/11201189/image?width=500&height=500&version=1453669660943

e) Upload your News report PDF File/Format in Calameo. Paste here the link of Calameo of
your News Report here. Chek it this manual of Calameo:
http://www.mariobenedetti.edu.uy/Tutoriales/Tutorial%20Calameo.pdf

- Link blogger for your news report:

Author: Diana Margarita Araque

Adapted by: Rubén Mauricio Muñoz – Elsy Marina Cantor