It’s been a long time since I’ve posted anything, but I’m back! I’ve been busy taking care of my kids and writing a novel, which is being published by Viking, an imprint of Penguin, and is coming out in February, 2011. It’s called TRAFFICKED and it’s about a seventeen-year-old girl who comes to LA from [...]
In my last post about writing a TOEFL essay, I talked about your introductory paragraph. Usually, people don’t have time for more than their thesis and two main points or reasons. Today, I want to talk about the body of the essay – the main information section of the essay. In the body of the [...]
Okay, so, you may or may not agree that gay marriage is a good thing. Even here in California, which is a hippie (person from the 60′s or who follows the 60′s way of thinking – free love, sandals, long hair…) liberal-land (a place where many people have liberal/socialist/left-leaning beliefs), only around 50 percent of [...]
One of my regular visitors sent me an essay about an experience he had in Niagara Falls. I told you to use sensory details in your writing. Below, I’ve posted most of his essay. You can read it first or after my comments. If you read it first, try to figure out if the highlighted [...]
If you want to write a strong TOEFL essay or even a good email, you have to get good at using details in your writing. In this blog post, I talk about an experience I had in which a really sweet transvestite did my makeup. (sweet = nice) (transvestite = a man dressed as a [...]
Are you afraid of writing? Don’t be. Have a little fun. Think of it as a kind of lying (lying=not telling the truth) that you’re allowed to do. For some people, writing anything in English, especially a TOEFL essay, makes them break out in a cold sweat (to break out in a cold sweat = [...]