ESL Grammar

    HOME
    LESSON PLAN 1
    LESSON PLAN 2
    TEACHER & LEARNER
    BASIC GRAMMAR
    THEORIES & METHODS
    CLASS MANAGEMENT
    INTRODUCE LANGUAGE
    READING & LISTENING
    TIPS FOR TEACHING
    THE CLASSROOM
    ACTIVITIES ELEM
    ACTIVITIES MIDDLE
    ACTIVITIES HIGH
    ACTIVITIES ADULT
    TEACHER ETIQUETTE

back to top

back to top

back to top

back to top

back to top

back to top

back to top

Basic Grammar

Parts of Speech
NOUN
a person, place, or thing. Can be the subject or object of a sentence. Ex: cat, horse, mother, Denmark

PRONOUN
a word that replaces or stands for ("pro" = for) a noun. Ex: he, she, it

VERB
an action word. Ex: sit, laugh, run

ADJECTIVE
a word that describes or modifies a noun. Answers the questions "how many," "what kind," etc. Ex: happy, suicidal, red, dangerous

ADVERB
a word that describes or modifies a verb. Ex: carefully, quickly, wisely. Also sometimes modifies an adjective. ("She was very tall." 'Very' is an adverb modifying 'tall,' which in turn is an adjective modifying 'she'.) Adverbs usually, but not always, end in "-ly". (However, not every word ending in "ly" is an adverb: "friendly," for example, is an adjective.)

PREPOSITION
(literally "pre-position") a word that indicates the relationship of a noun (or noun phrase) to another word. Examples of prepositions are to, at, with, for, against, across.

Putting Words Together

PHRASE
an expression (can be a single word, but usually more) which contains a single thought but is not necessarily a complete sentence. Words make up phrases; phrases make up sentences. By some definitions, a phrase cannot contain a verb.

PREPOSITIONAL PHRASE
A phrase beginning with a preposition. You could have figured that out, right?
Example:
I am sitting in the bushes. "I am sitting" is a complete sentence unto itself; it contains a subject ("I") and a verb ("am sitting"). The phrase "in the bushes" is a prepositional phrase ("in" being the preposition) that expands upon the basic concept.

SENTENCE
the basic unit of writing. A sentence should have a subject and a predicate. The subject is the noun to which the sentence's verb refers; the predicate is the verb plus whatever other parts modify or elaborate on it. Example:
My mother sings. "My" is a possessive pronoun; "mother" is the subject (noun); "sings" is the verb.

There are several types of sentences. The major ones are:

DECLARATIVE
The majority of sentences are declarative. A declarative sentence makes a statement. This sentence is declarative, as are the previous two.

INTERROGATORY
An interrogatory sentence asks a question. Do you understand that? Which of these sentences is an example?

IMPERATIVE
An imperative sentence gives a command. Ex: "Shut up and kiss me." Note that an imperative sentence does not require a subject; the pronoun "you" is implied.

RUN-ON SENTENCE
A sentence that is too long and should be broken into two or more sentences. One sentence should present one basic concept; if it presents more than that, it may be a run-on. A large number of "and"s, "but"s, and similar joining words is one warning sign of a run-on.

SENTENCE FRAGMENT
A phrase that is acting like a sentence but is incomplete. Examples:
My favorite color. This is not a sentence because it contains no verb. Walking very slowly. This is not a sentence because it contains no noun. On the table. This is not a sentence because it contains neither a verb nor a subject.

Sentence fragments are acceptable as answers to direct questions:
"Where is my sword?" "In the bushes."

More about Verbs

PASSIVE vs. ACTIVE VERBS
A verb is active when the subject performs the verb. A verb is passive when the subject is the recipient of the verb. In general, passive verb construction is considered "wimpy" or nonspecific.
Xena was watched by the villagers. Xena is the subject of the sentence, but the verb is "watch" and Xena is not doing the watching; therefore the verb is passive and "the villagers" is the object. This construction is not ideal. The villagers watched Xena. Now the villagers are the subject, Xena is the direct object, and the verb is active. This is better than the previous example.

CONJUGATION
To conjugate a verb is to state the form the verb takes for each person. For example, to conjugate the verb "to have" (in the present tense) you say "I have, you have, he/she/it has, we have, y'all have, they have."

TENSES
I assume we all know what past, present and future are. Most verbs take different forms depending on tense. For example, "I eat" is present, "I ate" is past and "I will eat" is future.

In addition, every verb has a past participle (p.p.). Use a form of "to have" plus the p.p. to indicate nonspecific past events.

Example: The p.p. of "to eat" is "eaten." For a specific event, use "ate": "Yesterday I ate an apple for lunch." For something that happened in the past at an unspecified time, or over a period of time, use "have" plus the p.p.: "I have eaten many apples in my lifetime." For double-past (talking about something that happened before something else in the past) use "had" plus the p.p.: "Yesterday Xena offered me an apple for dinner, but I had eaten one for lunch, so I had an orange instead."

Most (but certainly not all!) past participles end in -en, e.g. eaten, spoken, ridden.

Miscellaneous

DIRECT vs. INDIRECT OBJECT
An object is a noun that is the recipient of the verb in the sentence. It's easier to demonstrate than to explain: Xena grabbed her sword.

Xena is the subject, because she performs the verb. "Grabbed" is the verb; "her" is a possessive pronoun; the sword is the direct object because the grabbing is performed upon it.

Xena put her sword on the table.

Xena is the subject; "put" is the verb; the sword is the direct object; the table is the indirect object.

PERSON
Tells whom the speaker (or writer) is speaking (or writing) about. The majority of stories are written in the third person singular: "Xena woke up. She was hungry, so she started a fire and made pancakes."

Some stories (notably "If on a winter's night a traveler" by Italo Calvino; also all those "Choose Your Adventure" books we loved when we were kids) are written in the second person: "You look around and see Xena approaching. You reach for your sword."

A good number of stories ("Catcher in the Rye," all the Sherlock Holmes novels, etc.) is written in first person: "I woke up to find Xena had abandoned me again. 'Gabrielle,' I said to myself, 'this is the last straw.”

The plurals are: first person "we/us," second person "you" (or "y'all"), third person "they/them."

DECLENSION
Irrelevant in English; declension is the noun analog to conjugation. In many other languages (e.g. Latin), nouns take different forms depending on how they function in sentences.

PARSING
To parse a sentence means to take it apart and identify each element in the sentence. In my mom's day, diagramming sentences (literally drawing a diagram that shows how each word and clause functions in the sentence) was a standard part of elementary education.

1. Spelling Errors
There is no good excuse for spelling errors in a final draft.
Everyone should use a dictionary or turn on Spell Check. When in doubt, check it out!

2. Run-on Sentences
Run-ons occur when you try to make one sentence do too much. For example:
William gazed across the broad Pacific his heart was filled with dread.
Avoid run-ons by: a. breaking the long sentence into separate sentences:
William gazed across the broad Pacific. His heart was filled with dread.
b. reducing one of the clauses to a subordinate clause and adding a comma:
When William gazed across the broad Pacific, his heart was filled with dread.
c. adding a comma and coordinating conjunction between the two clauses:
William gazed across the broad Pacific, but his heart was filled with dread.

3. Sentence Fragments
Fragments occur when you’ve written only part of a sentence. For example:
Because there was no other way of escaping the fire.
Fix fragments by making sure your sentence contains both a subject and a verb:
He leaped out of the window because there was no other way of escaping the fire.
Subject/Verb Agreement
If the subject is singular, use a singular verb; if the subject is plural, use a plural verb:
The arrival of many friends promises a good time.
Either the principal or the coach usually attends the dance.
Remember: the subject of a sentence is never contained within a prepositional phrase!

4. Pronoun Agreement
Almost everyone makes this mistake: Everyone should get out their books.
A pronoun must agree in number with its antecedent (the word to which the pronoun refers).
Rewrite the sentence using singular pronouns: Everyone should take out his or her book.
Singular pronouns include: each, either, neither, one, everyone, no one, everybody, nobody, anyone, someone, somebody.

5. Verb Tense
Tense means time. Verbs tell us what action is occurring, and when it is occurring. Verbs change form to indicate when an action takes place. Your writing should remain in one tense, switching only when necessary to the meaning. To fix tenses, read your draft looking only for tense agreement.

6. Plural & Possessive
An “s” is put at the end of a word for two reasons: to make it plural or to show possession. When you add an “s” to make a plural, don’t use an apostrophe:
Plurals: books, students Possessives: the book’s pages; the student’s desk
Possessives for plural nouns: the books’ pages; all of the students’ desks
When you add an “s” to make a plural, don’t use an apostrophe.
Possessive pronouns don’t use apostrophes: yours, hers, its, ours, theirs.

7. Capitalization
Remember to capitalize proper names, the personal pronoun “I”, names of cities, states, countries, and important words in titles such as I Never Promised You a Rose Garden.
Titles that should be underlined (or italicized) include: books, long poems, plays, magazines, movies, published speeches, TV programs, ships, works of art, long musical works, CDs.
Titles that should be in “quotation marks” are short stories, songs, short poems, articles in magazines or newspapers, essays, episodes of a TV program, chapter titles in books.

8. Word Usage= A word used incorrectly. Sentence Usage= a sentence constructed awkwardly.

Frequently confused words:
It’s = it is Its = possessive of it To = toward, as far as Too = also, extremely Two = 2 Your = possessive of you You’re = you + are Their = possessive of they They’re = they + are There = in that place

Improper Contractions
Never use could of, should of, would of. What you mean is could have, should have, would have; correct contractions are could’ve, would’ve, should’ve.
Try not to use contractions at all in formal writing.

Negatives
You should only have one negative word per sentence. Example: I can’t do that.
Negatives: not, don’t, can’t, won’t, shouldn’t, couldn’t, wouldn’t, didn’t, neither/nor, no, nothing.

Parallel Structure
All items in a series need to follow the same structure:
Incorrect: He stopped, listened a moment, then he locked the door.
Correct: He stopped, listened a moment, then locked the door.
Incorrect: They were singing, dancing, and looked at each other.
Correct: They were singing, dancing, and looking at each other.

9. Punctuation
A question ends with a question mark [?].
A semi-colon [;] is not a comma. It joins two clauses of a compound sentence:
We were bored with the programs on TV; we decided to go to the library.
A colon [:] introduces a list of items:
Our school has teams for most sports: track, basketball, football, soccer, swimming and tennis.
A hyphen [-] shows that part of a word is carried onto the next line. Break the word between syllables; you can’t divide a one-syllable word.
Quotation marks are used properly as follows:
Craig said, “Something is wrong with my hard drive.”
“I want to go to the Epicentre,” she explained. “My favorite team is the Quakes.”

10. Troublesome Verb Conjugation
There are several troublesome verbs that aren't ordinary, the ones we call irregular verbs because they don't take their different forms in standard ways. Most writers occasionally have trouble remembering the basic forms of some of the following irregular verbs:

Verb (Present Tense) Past Tense Past Participle Verb (Present Tense) Past Tense Past Participle Begin Began Have Begun Lie Lay Have Lain Bring* Brought Have Brought Ride Rode Have Ridden Choose Chose Have Chosen Ring Rang Have Rung Come* Came Have Come Rise Rose Have Risen Do* Did Have Done Run* Ran Have Run Drink Drank Have Drunk Seek Sought Have Sought Drive Drove Have Driven See Saw Have Seen Eat Ate Have Eaten Sink Sank Have Sunk Fall Fell Have Fallen Speak Spoke Have Spoken Fly Flew Have Flown Swim Swam Have Swum Forget Forgot Have Forgotten Take Took Have Taken Give Gave Have Given Throw Threw Have Thrown Know Knew Have Known Write Wrote Have Written *

Dom’s Cafe - The #1 Resource for ESL Jobs and Information in Korea and Asia