Making a good first impression

Aims1. To know how to write the

perfect introduction2. To plan your exposition

composition out

• You meet someone important for the first time

• How should you make a good first impression on them?

Imagine…..

you should make an impact and impress them, so that they form a good impression of you fo

r the rest of your acquaintance.

What should a good written introduction do?

• Make it clear what the composition will be about – perhaps a general introduction to the topic

• Grab the reader’s attention• State your thesis/main idea• It should be neither too short, nor too lo

ng.

Your task

1. Read the 4 introductions to an essay on the Youth Olympic Games in Singapore

2. Give each introduction a mark out of 5

What could I do?

– A rhetorical question could make your reader think e.g. ‘Have you ever considered where all your waste goes to? (a composition about recycling)

– Include a fact/statistic e.g. ‘80% of all waste ends up in landfill sites, which Singapore is quickly running out of’

– An anecdote – make it personal to you to make it real for your reader e.g. do you have a friend who smokes? I do. Her name is Alice.

– Include triplets to cement the idea in your reader’s head.

Should people give money to charity?

YES – why? NO – why?

Today’s main task

1. Plan out your ‘burger’ – the main ideas for your exposition

2. Write the introduction, to be assessed by a peer at the end of the lesson.

Peer Assessment

Check a peer’s introduction and give a mark out of 5 for it.

Does it:• Make it clear what the composition

will be about – perhaps a general introduction to the topic?

• Grab the reader’s attention?• State their thesis/main idea?• Neither too long nor too short?

Homework – for Monday

• Write the first draft of your exposition ‘Should people give money to charity?’

• I will collect them in on Monday to check, then you will need to complete the final version over the March holiday.