remedial exercises

[kotrainee]

I am doing the CELTA course at the moment and my assignment is to mark a student's piece of work and supply a remedial exercise to improve the student's English. However, I think that the greatest problem is the student's unwillingness to elaborate on their ideas, for example: 'I want to visit new places.' without any indication of where she would like to go. The student is an Upper Intermediate. Do you know of any remedial exercises to improve fluency or details supplied?

Many thanks

[emsr2d2]

I am doing the CELTA course at the moment and my assignment is to mark a student's piece of work and supply a remedial exercise to improve the student's English. However, I think that the greatest problem is the student's unwillingness to elaborate on their ideas, for example: 'I want to visit new places.' without any indication of where she would like to go. The student is an Upper Intermediate. Do you know of any remedial exercises to improve fluency or details supplied?

Many thanks

One of my advanced students is a little like this. When she speaks, she's full of info. When she writes, it's a whole different story.

I actually gave her an exercise which would fit your example. First, I gave her a sheet of questions to which she could write relatively short answers:

Are you going on holiday this summer?
Where are you going to go?
Where would you like to go?
Why would you like to go there?
Now give me 3 more reasons why you'd like to go there?!
Who will you go with?
How will you get there?
Etc etc

After she'd answered all the questions, sometimes with only 3 or 4 words, I asked her to write me a piece of around 500 words (for homework) which covered all the answers she had given but of course would require more information in order to reach the word count. She did it. She hated it but she did it!!! But it made her realise the importance of coming up with additional information, either to simply elaborate on a potentially boring answer, or to gain more vocabulary and use more complicated grammar.