Advanced ESL students can be exposed to a wide variety of real-world English reading material. This gives them access to more topics about which to write. In addition, students are ready to practice presenting and justifying their opinions about what they read. They are also able to describe evidence and facts to support their ideas in writing. These skills are important in a wide range of activities, including academic essay writing and writing letters of complaint or opinion to companies or politicians.

IELTS Writing
The International English Language Testing System (IELTS) is an English language test that is recognized around the world for accurately measuring test takers' English language abilities. After registering for free on this site, you can download a variety of practical writing exercises and resources designed to help students get practice for the test. However, the skills tested include logical essay organization, the assessment and description of graphs, and giving and justifying an opinion. Two writing tasks are tested in both the general and academic writing sections of the IELTS. Choose a topic most relevant to your students' needs to help them learn to organize their thoughts and express themselves effectively in English.

Breaking News English
Download one of the thousands of news topics and its associated activities from the website Breaking News. Topics are arranged by month. Read the topic's headline to find one you think your students would enjoy. These resources are available for free. At the end of each activity packet, a section with writing exercises offers students plenty of ways to practice their writing. They may write a magazine article, write a letter to a politician or any of a number of other creative writing exercises related to the news topic.

Persuasion Essays
After reading about how to write a persuasive essay on the ESL Bee website, have your students write their own five-paragraph persuasive essay on a topic of their choosing. Have students bring their first drafts to class, work in pairs to correct each other's papers, focusing first on organization and flow and then on sentence structure and word choice. Students then revise their essays and rewrite their papers.

Magazine Group Stories
Put your students into small groups. Give each group a folder with a collection of magazine pictures inside. Students then pick a few pictures they like and want to write a story about. Each student contributes to the story with his own ideas. Students write the story, revise it and present it to the class when they are done.