Ex. 17.14: Family Members – Writing

FAMILY MEMBERS. Write a four-paragraph essay describing two of your family members. Bring photos of your family to class and be prepared to describe your family members for other students.

• Pre-Writing: Find pictures of your family members and jot some notes about the following:
  • Name, age, hometown, residence, school, work, interests
  • Appearance, personality, and comparisons to other family members
• First Draft: Write a rough draft of your essay, but focus more on content than on grammatical correctness.
• Editing: Read your draft and check the items listed below.
  • Organization: Does each paragraph have a main topic? Are the sentences within each paragraph related to each other
  • Cohesion and Style: Have you connected some of the sentences by using conjunctions such as og (and), men (but), fordi (because), and som (who, which)? Have you varied your sentence structure by starting some sentences with adverbials?
• Spelling and Grammar
  • Use present tense.
    ex.) Faren min arbeider på kontor.
  • Check usage of the infinitive.
    ex.) Broren min liker å spille tennis.
  • Check the adjective endings.
    ex.) Hun har lyst hår og grønne øyne.
  • Check the comparisons.
    ex.) Moren min er høyere enn meg. Jeg ligner på faren min.
• Second draft: Rewrite your description now and make the changes you worked on during the editing process. Submit to your instructor.