Events

THE  WINNERS ARE:
1st place: Marina  Marina (Minsk, Belarus) with 12,123 points
2nd place: Darya Shmat (Minsk, Belarus) with 7,486 points
3d place: Mohamed Essalih (Algiers, Algeria) with 3,382 points.

September 1, 2016 is the closing date of the Summer Writing Contest. 

Visit Community Talk to see the submissions and the list of the texts and scores. 

  Summer is the best time to develop writing skills, because we all have more time to read, watch films, attend events, travel, have a lot of new experiences and time to store them in the form of texts and multimedia.
WriteSpeakEnglish.com has decided to give you an additional incentive to do that - we announce our

2016 SUMMER WRITING INTERNATIONAL CONTEST!

Why writing in summer?
Writing is of the utmost importance for three reasons:
1. It helps you develop your verbal expression and also create a unique online image of yours.
2. It dramatically improves your style, accuracy and vocabulary, since you have time to check what you have written.
3. Professionals with strong writing skills are in high demand on the job market.
Why? Because writing requires dedication, time and creativity, and not all people are prepared to commit themselves to that. Be exceptional.

Besides, your International Contest Winner Certificate might help you to be admitted to a course of studies, to get a visa, to be promoted, etc.

THE RULES OF THE CONTEST

1. ELIGIBILITY
The Summer Writing International Contest is open to all non-native learners of English from any country of the world.

2. AGE
Any age starting from 18 years old.
If you are under 18, please, read the rules here.

3. TIME
Contributions uploaded between June 1 and August 31, 2016 will be considered.

4. CONTENT
Feel free to choose any topic and form of expression you like, provided you respect our Code of Conduct.
http://writespeakenglish.com/terms-of-use/#three
In short : do not post anything that would be considered inappropriate at school.

5. ORIGINALITY
All contributions must be written by the participants themselves. Plagiarism in any form will not be tolerated and will cause ban from this and any future contests. We do not want to have anything to do with frauds.

Your teachers can give you some advice and help improve accuracy, but not to write instead of you. In case of doubt, we may ask you to write a passage within a limited period of time to prove your command of the language.

6. AWARDS
1st place: a certificate and a prize from Great Britain
2nd place: a certificate
3d place: a certificate

Public Award Certificate

7. ASSESSMENT
Both the size and the number of submissions will be considered, but the major criteria will be the quality, as presented in this RUBRIC:

2016 SUMMER WRITING INTERNATIONAL CONTEST RUBRIC

Criteria	Outstanding	Average	Leaves much to be desired
A. Content multiplier	Exciting Informative Funny XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX{    3	It's a well-written text, but it does not impress the reader.     2	It's hard to understand why the author wrote this text 1
B. Quality of the language multiplier	Free of mistakes, exact words and diverse structures 3	Some mistakes, which, however, do not prevent the reader from understanding the message 1	The text is hard to understand due to grammar and spelling mistakes, wrong use of words, wrong punctuation 0.5
C. Multimedia (photos, pictures, videos, sound tracks, maps, etc.)	Quality multimedia elements. Multimedia supports the text. 100 points	The multimedia elements are either of poor quality or do not fully match the text 50 points	No multimedia elements     No points

The score for each submission will be calculated in the following way:

The number of words in each submission will be counted and then multiplied by the score gained by Criteria A, B and C.

Examples:

1. Zack has submitted a text that contains 130 words. He tells an exciting story about rafting and supports it with a great photo and a video. However, there are several mistakes in his story: wrong punctuation, spelling mistakes and wrong tenses.

So, Zack will get the score of

Criterion A: 130 х 3 = 390
Criterionum B: 130 х 2 = 260
Criterion C: 100

Total: 750

Let's look at another example.

2. Joe wrote a long text, 300 words, about the book he was reading. Great job! But Joe didn't make any analysis or evaluation of the book. He limited himself to simple retelling of the plot without adding any value. Why did he write the text? It is not clear – there is nothing to remember from his text. Besides, Joe didn't proofread his text. His sentences are not finished, some words are used incorrectly and make it difficult to understand the message. And Joe didn't upload any illustration.

So, Joe's submission will be evaluated as follows:
Criterion A: 300 х 1 = 300
Criterionum B: 300 х 0.5 = 150
Criterion C: 0

Total: 450

As you can see from these examples, it is much better to write a shorter quality text than a long and uninteresting one. Think about making a contribution, think about the value you are adding to this project to keep people interested after our 2016 SUMMER WRITING INTERNATIONAL CONTEST is over.

Public Award Certificate winner will be determined by the number of positive comments under your submissions. You are encouraged to share your contributions in your social networks and ask your social media friends to read them and to write meaningful comments. We do not think that putting likes reflects the values of the text. In most cases people even do not read what they put a like under. This is why in our contest only comments that evaluate the text will be counted. Knowing that, you will do your best to write a valuable, interesting and useful text.

Now that you know all the rules – we wish you the best of luck and look forward to your contributions.

Step 1: Register with http://writespeakenglish.com/
Step 2. Go to your Profile.
Step 3. Upload your text to Community Talk. 

Step 4. Use the buttons under your post to share it in social networks. 

Do NOT to sign up - there will be no event in the ICAN Club.
The winners will be announced on this page.