Responding to Grammar and Writing

1. Responding to Grammar and Writing Jan Fluitt-Dupuy Director of ESL jdupuy@scad.edu 912-525-7036

2. You Can’t Learn without Goofing! Be sensitive to self-esteem Encourage mistakes as a natural step in growing as a language learner Highlight the error in a supportive manner Do not correct for the student (Hint: avoid having a pencil in your hand) Guide the student to independent learning

3. Address Global Concerns First Content, Critical Thought, Organizational Patterns are most important elements of writing. Find and analyze the thesis statement (TS). Look for strong topic sentences (ts) in body paragraphs. Analyze the sentence supporting the ts. Balance positive/negative comments.

4. Sentence-Level Concerns Once larger issues are settled, address errors in a hierarchical way. More serious errors impede communication. Errors in verbs and sentence structure are first-order concerns.

5. 1st order errors

6. 2nd order concerns • while distracting, these errors do not impede understanding.

7. Last order concerns Only if there’s time!

8. Know your verbs • A verb expresses an action (jump, laugh, love) or names a state of existence (be, seem, appear). • Verbs are the most changeable words in English. • We change their form according to : • Past, present, and future time (I worked, I will work) • How often or when it happens (I am working now,) • How many times it happens (I have been working here for four years) • How many people make it happen (she works, they work) • Whether the subject performs (John hit the ball.) or receives the action (The ball was hit.)

9. Know your sentences A clause is a group of words that has a subject and a verb. Clauses can be independent and can stand alone as a sentence. (She left. It was late.) Dependent clause have an extra word in front of the subject and verb (like because, who, if, that) that can not stand alone as a sentence. Dependent clauses “depend” on independent clauses to complete them (Jane went home early because she was tired.)

10. Know your sentences • SVO is the dominant sentence pattern in English. • There are four types of sentence in English. • Simple A sports teacher invented the game of basketball about 100 years ago. • Compound The game of basketball was invented in the United States, but it is now popular all over the world. • Complex A sports teacher invented the game because he wanted his students to have a sport that they could play indoors during the cold months of winter. • Compound Complex The first baskets were peach baskets, which were attached to the walls of the school gym, and the first basketballs were soccer balls.

11. Know your nouns A noun names a person, place, or thing Count nouns name people, places, and things that you can count (one book, two books). Noncount nouns name things you cannot count (sunshine, oxygen). Noncount nouns are never plural and you can not use an a or an with them. Subjects must agree with the verbs in English. (She work everyday.)

12. Google “purdue owl” http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/section/5/

13. learnersdictionary.com

14. Questions? Jan Fluitt-Dupuy Director of ESL jdupuy@scad.edu 912-525-7036