Question

Anna, an intermediate-level ELL student from Eastern Europe, is showing great improvement in her English skills, but still doesn't do very well when she is given an essay assignment. She struggles to develop her main idea with enough supporting details and tends to digress in her thoughts. Which two of the following activities would be most effective in helping Anna improve her writing skills? Select all answers that apply.

Answer 1

To improve her essay writing skills, Anna could benefit from brainstorming to generate and organize ideas, and practicing paragraph development to better support her main ideas.

Step-by-step explanation:

To help Anna improve her English writing skills, particularly with regard to developing her main idea with sufficient supporting details and preventing digression, two activities could be most effective: brainstorming and practicing paragraph development.

Brainstorming will enable Anna to quickly and informally generate possible ideas about her topic, jotting them all down. She can then combine related ideas and remove irrelevant ones, assisting her in focusing her thoughts and avoiding digression.

Practicing the development of main points in a paragraph could also be beneficial. With this practice, Anna can learn to express her main idea in a topic sentence and then provide supporting details that expand on this main point. She can also practice integrating relevant evidence within her body paragraphs. This will strengthen her ability to provide a sense of completeness and unity in her essays, showing a clear connection between her main idea and the supporting details.

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