Teaching and Learning ESL Grammar: 2014

How to Share a Writer's Help Resource Page or Quiz

1. Sharing a Writer's Help Resource Page:

Step 1: Click "Share a Link" from the menu on the right hand side of the page.
Step 2: When the pop-up window opens, type in your email address (do NOT copy/paste the URL since it doesn't always work)

2. Sharing Writer's Help Exercise Page:

Step 1: Click "Share a Link" from the menu at the top of the pop-up window (the exercise page).

Step 2: When the pop-up window opens, type in your email address (do NOT copy/paste the URL since it doesn't always work)

Prepositions and Phrasal Verbs

Purpose/Tentative Topics: This workshop is for you if you have trouble with...

Recognizing words that function as prepositions (as part of phrasal verbs or noun phrases)
Recognizing grammatical structure of prepositional phrases and/or phrasal verbs
Knowing how (or what kinds of) prepositions are used within/before certain noun phrases
Knowing how (or what kinds of) prepositions are used after certain verbs or within certain phrasal verbs

Note: The list above is "tentative" and is subject to change based on the needs analysis of the students who sign up. Don't worry if you don't understand all the grammatical terms above. You do not need to know all the terms to be able to follow the workshop because they will explained during the workshop. Please also note that the focus of the workshop is to help you get better at "using" English grammar rather than acquiring the knowledge of English grammar itself.

Sign-up: Sign-up links for all sessions are available here.

Method/Procedure: The first hour of each session will be a lecture/discussion and the second hour will be a hands-on practice in smaller groups. There will be three instructors for each session, so you will have opportunities to ask for one-on-one help during small group activities.

Supplementary Materials: Any materials provided during the workshop that you may use for further study will be uploaded here AFTER each session.

Contact: Please contact eslwriting@mx.uillinois.edu for more questions.

Articles

Purpose: This workshop is for you if you have trouble with...

Using the right kind of definite or indefinite articles in the given context

Knowing what kinds of items (nouns) need definite articles (the) vs indefinite articles (a, an) in which context

Knowing what kinds of items (nouns) are considered (not) countable and thus (not) require indefinite articles (a, an)

Method/Procedure: The first hour of each session will be a lecture/discussion and the second hour will be a hands-on practice in smaller groups. There will be three instructors for each session, so you will have opportunities to ask for one-on-one help during small group activities.

Supplementary Materials: Any materials provided during the workshop that you may use for further study will be uploaded here AFTER each session.

Contact: Please contact eslwriting@mx.uillinois.edu for more questions.

Tense and Aspect

Purpose/Tentative Topics: This workshop is for you if you have trouble with...

Knowing when to use which tense and aspect (considering the context of your writing) in English
Using the correct markers for certain tense and aspect in English
Using the correct past or past participle forms of English verbs (esp. irregular verbs)
Keeping your tense consistent by avoiding abrupt shift within a paragraph

Method/Procedure: Each session will be two hours. The first hour of each session will be a lecture/discussion and the second hour will be a hands-on practice in smaller groups. There will be three instructors for each session, so you will have opportunities to ask for one-on-one help during small group activities.

Supplementary Materials: Any materials provided during the workshop that you may use for further study will be uploaded here after each session.

Contact: Please contact eslwriting@mx.uillinois.edu for more questions.

Sentence Structure

Purpose/Tentative Topics: This workshop is for you if you have trouble with...

Placing and ordering important elements of English sentences (e.g. nouns, verbs and adverbials) appropriately without omitting, misusing, or misplacing them in a sentence
Making complex or compound sentences whose parts fit together properly

EIL 422 Teaching Practicum Training

Part 1: Understanding UIUC ESL Undergraduate Students

Part 2: Analyzing Common Error Types
- Lecture (PPT; handout)
- Group Work

Verb Usage (Group 1; Group 2; Group 3; Answer Key)
Tense and Aspect (Group 1; Group 2; Group 3; Answer Key)
Articles (Group 1; Group 2; Answer Key)
Prepositions and Phrasal Verbs (Group 1; Group 2; Answer Key)

Part 3: Writer's Help Training

Writer's Help Grammar Resources (with other supplementary materials)
Writer's Help Instructor Guide (Just read Part 1 and 3)

Helpful Links:

UIUC ESL Writing Program Facebook Group
UIUC Undergraduate ESL Student Essays
Learner English - Focus on reading Chinese students' typical grammar issues (pp.317-323) or those of Korean students (pp.332-338)
Spring 2015 ESL Grammar Workshop Series Sign-up Post for Students

Grammar Workshop Lesson Plan

Part I: Grammar Diagnostic Test [Before Grammar Workshop Day]

Objectives: Students will be able to...

Recognize how much explicit and implicit knowledge they have about common types of grammar errors (and help the teachers know how to give feedback for them).
Recognize frequent types of errors they make in their essays so they can make an effective study plan.

Procedures:

Give students "Grammar Diagnostic Test" to submit in a hard copy.
Score the test using the answer key. The result (sample p.1, 2) from this test will tell you how much explicit/implicit knowledge each student has about common types of grammar errors. Alternatively, you may have them score their own test result and record the result via Google Form (sample) so you can collect it easily (and your students can compare their own result to others by reviewing the statistics)
Read your students’ essays (final or semi-final drafts) to identify their "performance" errors. Find the most prevalent types of errors (1~3 types) in their essays by referring to “Common ESL Grammar Errors” chart (also provided in the Grammar Diagnostic Test. Write down the names of the types either on their diagnostic test sheet or their essay drafts. Then, you may do one of the following depending on the level of your students:

Option 1 (For advanced students): Do not point out where the grammar errors are. Simply write down the types of errors for students to identify and correct. See here for an example. Depending on the level of your class, you may ignore this option since it could be too indirect.
Option 2 (For high-intermediate students): In addition to option 1, highlight words, phrases, or sentences that have errors. See here for an example.
Option 3 (For low or low-intermediate students): In addition to option 2, highlight words, phrases, or sentences that have errors and provide clues for how to fix them. See here for an example.

Note: You may have difficulty determining the level of the students. Based on my personal experience, students who have more than 3-4 types of errors (especially sentence structure errors, type #9-11, 13) all throughout their essays are low level, those who have about 3-4 types of errors in some parts of their essays are intermediate, and those who have less than 3 that are mostly word choice or sentence structure errors are advanced.

Part II: In-class Grammar Workshop [40 min]

Objectives: Students will be able to...

Understand the importance of correcting their own grammar errors.
Recognize which types of grammar errors can be particularly problematic in writing.
Locate resources they can use to improve their grammar.

Procedures:

1. Go over "Grammar Knowledge Questionnaire" part of the Grammar Diagnostic Test with your students. You may also discuss the following points:

Does grammar matter in academic writing? Why or why not?
Which types of grammar errors are particularly problematic in writing (i.e., which types of errors are important for you to avoid)? Why?
Do you think you can correct your own grammar errors through proofreading? If so, how?

You may use this PPT to aid your lecture/discussion.

2. Go over the “Common ESL Grammar Errors” chart and the quiz result (sample) as a class. Ask students if there were any particular types of errors that they had difficulty with. Based on my experience, students are usually familiar with common parts of speech (verb, noun, adjective, adverb, preposition) and different kinds of tenses, singular/plural nouns, count/non-count nouns, and articles. They are usually not familiar with terms like "independent/dependent clauses, pronouns, conjunctions, sentence fragments, run-on sentences, and punctuations". However, understanding of these terms may vary from student to student (direct them to Grammar Term Glossary). Give explanations accordingly.

3. Provide helpful grammar resources students can use to work on particular grammar issues they have. If you are using Writer's Help eBook, you may provide Guide for Using WH Grammar Exercises.

Homework:

1. Ask students to proofread their essays to find and fix their grammar errors, focusing on the type(s) of errors that you identified for them. (Encourage them to find as many errors as they can.) Have them use “track changes” and “comments” so that you can see the changes they made easily. Have them refer to these homework samples (sample 1, 2, 3). Have them upload the proofread version in their Dropbox and name it as "student's name_diagnostic_grammar"

2. For Writer's Help users: Have your students choose which grammar errors they want to work on this semester and find appropriate exercises from Guide for Using WH Grammar Exercises. Have them write down the titles of the exercises in a Writer's Help Report for you to check.

Part III: Follow-up

1. Check your students’ homework from Part II and give feedback on their corrections, identifying which types of errors the students could or could not self-correct successfully. You may give this feedback in a written form or face-to-face through individual conferences. You may also have students peer review each other’s grammar correction. Be sure to address the following points in your feedback (or in peer feedback)

Did each correction contribute to the improvement of the writing? If the answer is “no”, briefly explain why the correction was not good and what will be a better correction.

Are there any important grammar error(s) that the student could not correct? If the answer is “yes”, highlight the errors and give more detailed guide with (or without) suggested correction.

2. Provide further help on the grammar errors that students could not self-correct appropriately (hint: according to research, students have trouble correcting "sentence structure" and "word choice" errors) by choosing all or one of the following options.

Option 1: Recommend specific resources from helpful grammar resources that individual students can study by themselves or submit as homework. Check their work and give feedback accordingly. Writer's Help has many good tutorials on some common grammar problems.
Option 2: Choose a few grammar errors that most of students had trouble correcting on their own and design mini lesson(s) for those errors (refer to Jin's Word Choice Lesson as a sample).
Option 3: Make a learning contract with some struggling students on the most serious errors that they need to work on in order to hold them accountable. Give intensive, focused feedback on one or two errors they need to work on (meet with them if necessary). Make a contract with them stating that they will get points deducted for the same type of grammar mistakes in their subsequent drafts or in their following assignments. Encourage them to keep an error log.

Supplementary Materials:
Grammar Workshop PPT
Grammar Diagnostic Test (Key)
Grammar Diagnostic Test Self-scoring Sheet Sample
Grammar Term Glossary
Feedback Sample 1
Feedback Sample 2
Feedback Sample 3
Self-editing Homework Sample 1
Self-editing Homework Sample 2
Self-editing Homework Sample 3
Helpful Grammar Resources
Guide for Using Writer's Help eBook Grammar Resources
Error Log Assignment

If you are interested in learning how to use technology to help students self-correct their "word choice" errors in particular, check out this post.

Common ESL Error Types & Feedback

Common ESL Error Types, Examples and Feedback
Created by Jin Kim, 2011, Adapted from Ferris, D. (2002). Treatment of Error in Second Language Student Writing. Ann Arbor, M.I.:UM Press. The example sentences are compiled from ESL 505 Summer 2011 and ESL 501 Fall 2011 student essays)

Common ESL Grammar Error Statistics
Compiled by Jin Kim from ESL 501 Fall 2011 students

Common ESL Grammar Error Statistics
Compiled by Ariel Jagusztyn from ESL 505 Fall 2013 students

Error Types and Writer's Help Exercises

	Error Types	Writer's Help Exercises
1	Verb tense	Verb tense and mood 1 Verb tense and mood 2
2	Verb form (Errors in formation of the verb phrase except for tense markings)	Verb quick help Verb forms and tenses Verb forms with modals Verbs followed by gerunds of infinitives Present vs. past participles (-ing vs. -ed) Using verbs: review for all types of verb errors
3	Subject-verb (number) agreement	Subject-verb agreement quick help
4	Pronoun	Pronoun quick help
5	Articles/determiners	Article quick help articles and types of nouns Using articles 1 Using articles 2
6	Noun endings (plural/possessive endings)
7	Word choice (Incorrect use of idioms, using informal words, collocational problems)	misused words prepositions and idiomatic expressions
8	Word form (Using a wrong part of speech)	Adjectives and adverbs quick help
9	Sentence structure (general)	mixed constructions
10	Sentence structure (Run-ons)	Technology cannot behave as powerful as the traditional teaching method all the time, combining both could make our teaching-and-learning system much more effective. FB: You can’t join two complete sentences (independent clauses) using comma alone. You should add a conjunction word in addition to the comma. (“,” -> “,so”)
11	Sentence structure (Fragments)	One stereo type is that the Islamic religion treats women very badly. Which is not true. FB: This is not a complete sentence, which can’t stand alone with a period. Connect it to the previous sentence with a comma (-> “One stereo type is that the Islamic religion treats women very badly, which is not true”)
12	Punctuation	Alumnus Max Abramovitz an architect of New York City’s Lincoln Center designed Krannert Center. FB: You need to enclose this phrase in commas because it’s a break within a sentence that supplements and adds information to the subject. Refer to Punctuation handout
13	Missing elements (Missing object, verb, subject, relative pronouns, complementizer, etc[1] – this could also be categorized as sentence structure problem)	The advantages of preventing are bigger than disadvantages. FB: Preventing WHAT? You’re missing an object.
14	Spelling	I have received a lot of complements. FB: Check the spelling (-> compliments)
15	Informal language	Cloning is an awesome technology. FB: This is informal. Use more formal, specific word (e.g., beneficial, useful)

How to Solve Word Choice Problems through COCA

Objectives: You will be able to...

Recognize common sources of word choice problems, such as using wrong forms (wrong spelling or part of speech), style (informal word choice), idiomatic errors (using wrong articles or prepositions for phrasal verbs), collocation errors
Consider various aspects of vocabulary (part of speech, register, spelling, collocation, meaning in context, frequency, synonymy, etc.) when choosing the “right word” to use in academic writing.
Use Google, Word and Phrase. Info, Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) as reference tools when choosing the “right word” to use in academic writing.
Recognize important considerations for successful word search using the reference tools above

Task 1: Complete a diagnostic word choice quiz in Part I of Worksheet for ESL 502

Task 2: Solve practice questions in Part 2 and 3 of Worksheet for ESL 502 with COCA

Wordandphrase.info (COCA New Interface)

- Good for beginners (user-friendly, dictionary-like interface)

- Fewer number of words than regular COCA (only 120 out of 450 million words of texts)

- Less custom search functions available compared to the regular interface

- Only one line of a text is available to study the context

COCA Regular Interface

- Good for experienced users and researchers with some linguistic background knowledge

- More number of words than Word and Phrase Info

- More custom search functions, such as phrase search, customized wild card search (wild card words with certain part of speech/collocation options, collocation search, synonym search)

- Can read more than one line to study the context -> "Expanded text" function (Click either the year or the genre code to see the expanded text)

Task 3: Register for free on COCA Website and explore on your own.

Helpful Resources:

COCA Video Tutorial

COCA Basics Paper Tutorial

Word Choice Problem Solving Guide

Tips for More Effective COCA Search

For setting up a good search string, choose the right search key word (an anchor word) carefully. Not all adjacent words are relevant for a search (or interpretation of the search). E.g.) if you are looking for a content word that goes into the blank in I hope to ___?___ the goal, you should use the goal as an anchor word (the key word for search) because it determines the kind of the verb you should use in the blank. You should not use hope to as an anchor word.
Use a search (word) string that is an appropriate size. If the search string is too short (only one or two words), it is difficult to get a reliable answer quickly. (e.g. using only "implications" as a search word to find the preposition for "implications ___ teaching ESL") If the search string is too long (too specific), it is difficult to find many matching texts. (e.g. using "implications for teaching ESL")
For interpreting the results, Go for MORE FREQUENTLY used phrases. "Hot debate" and "Heated debate" are both possible collocates in English, but "heated debate" is much more commonly used.
Always check the CONTEXT and GENRE. It is often dangerous to look at only the frequency count and decide which one to use. Having a higher frequency counts does not always mean both words are possible in a given context. For example, "totally" and "fully" are considered synonyms, but only one of them is desirable in academic English. Also, "received the phone call" and "answer the phone" are both possible/frequent in English, but only one of them would work in a given context.
If there is no or few result showing, it happened for one of the following reasons: 1) one of the words could be spelled wrong, or an ungrammatical word or 2) the word combination is impossible or rare.