Learn English with MissSweetandSour: Writing

1. In groups of four, write a review of a restaurant where you have eaten recently and would recommend to others. Using the ICT tool of Google Docs (https://www.google.es/intl/es/docs/about/), and in groups of four students. Write about 30 words (each) and revise the lines written by the other members of the team. To know who the original author of the words is, choose and write a colour.

Use and follow the guidelines provided:

How to Write a Restaurant Review

The job of a food reviewer is to tell the taste, texture, smell, and presentation of a restaurant's food. You not only comment on the food but also on the atmosphere, staff knowledge, attentiveness, the speed of service and the general impression of the restaurant. A great food review allows the readers to decide whether or not they want to visit the restaurant when they're done reading your review.

This is how a review would be planned and then written:

1) Open your review with a catchy sentence. The first sentence of the review should make people want to read more. Remember, you are giving them a reason to either spend their money at this restaurant or skip ahead to another one, but you're also trying to get them to read your writing.

2) Describe 3-5 dishes that you sampled, not all of them. No one wants to read a laundry list of foods, so pick the foods that made the greatest impression on you (good or bad) and focus your writing on these dishes. You should try and talk about:

· Presentation

· Taste

3) Use big, colourful adjectives when writing. Remember that, above all, you're selling the experience here, not just the food.

4) Think about a restaurant's intentions, not just your personal preferences. A good food review is about helping other people find the restaurant, not just a platform to tell everyone your likes and dislikes. A good reviewer is as unbiased as possible, evaluating the restaurant as a whole. What kind of atmosphere are they going for here? Do they pull it off? How do your preferences match the restaurants?

5) Write a mixture of pros and cons. Unless it is either the very best restaurant you've ever eaten at or the very worst, it is not fair to write a review that is either all good or all bad. Try and give your audience the complete picture.

6) Make a recommendation. Ultimately, people want your advice on the food. What to order, what to skip, and what restaurants to go to depending on their mood.

7) Fill in the essential details of the restaurant in the beginning or end of the review. This is where you put in the average cost of a meal, the reservations time, and the address. You could also add a rating, such 3 out of 4 stars, if you wanted.

Here you have some useful language for a review:

The thing I liked most was

I was pleasantly surprised by

If you get a chance to

I was disappointed by/with

owned by

head chef (restaurant)

waiters (restaurant)

reasonable prices

(a bit/somehow) expensive

always fully booked

book in advance