Functional English - writing

A very useful worksheet that can be used to check your students’ understanding of basic punctuation.
Students match the name of the punctuation mark with its definition.

Useful one page hint / planning sheet for writing film reviews. Accompanied by planning / log sheets where learners can record their ideas about the events and characters.
With teaching ideas and full mapping to E3-L2 Functional English (writing).

A good mix of reading and writing resources all focusing on E1-E2 form-filling skills.
Includes: 3 forms to be filled in after reading three short descriptions; a personal form to complete, sentence work, and a matching exercise.
Fully mapped. Written for E1-E2 ESOL but also suitable for (and mapped to) Entry literacy and Functional English.

A fabulous City and Guilds style E3 literacy assignment that covers all aspects of E3 speaking and listening, reading and writing (see editor’s note below). Based on a trip to a seaside music festival, it makes a very appealing summer-time revision activity for music fans of any age.

A fabulous City and Guilds style E3 literacy assignment that covers all aspects of E3 speaking and listening, reading and writing (see Editor’s note below). Based on a real trip to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford it is written in a generic style and could be any local museum / art gallery.

A simplified story from Australia explains how Linda and her daughters are saving for a holiday. Accompanied by comprehension questions, writing- personal-opinions type questions, a spelling-punctuation task and a short writing task. Fully mapped to E2 Functional English and adult literacy (with additional teaching tips). Australian glossary provided for UK readers.

An enticing looking resource to encourage vocational art students (or anyone interested in art) to use commas, capital letters and full stops correctly. Along the way they’ll also find out more about Picasso, van Gogh, and Degas. With literacy and Functional English mapping information and answers.

This Blue Cross resource was written for strong E3 or L1 (or even L2) ESOL learners. I first used it as a homework exercise. The English on the site is a little quirky but it is an exercise using authentic material which always has its upsides and downsides.

However, it is good on human interests and most people like animals. It involves ICT, Reading and Writing. It’s best to pre-teach the vocabulary.

Also ideal for, and fully mapped to, Functional Skills English Level 1 reading and writng.

Two Tarsia puzzles based around formal and informal language. Guaranteed to prompt discussion as learners solve the puzzles. I suggest that the smaller one (16 piece triangle) is roughly at L1 and the larger on (24 piece hexagon) is at L2. I have duplicated some of my word choices from Imogen Stewart’s excellent ‘Little Britain’ (Language: formal, informal or slang?) resource which was also about formal and informal language (see link below). ‘Cheers’ has ‘regards’ as its synonym because of email sign offs – which I have found to be an interesting topic for discussion.

This is an adapted and expanded version of Jodie Travis’ ‘Hired or Fired’ resource which is of course based on the popular TV show “The apprentice”. I used Jodie’s resource last year with a really big group, getting them to create a poster to ‘sell’ Manchester. I added some more ‘Apprenticey’ bits in, such as getting them to pitch their ideas at the front of the class after they’d made the posters, and it worked really well.