Get Your Students Out of Your Grammar Class (and Into Mainstream Classes)
Douglas Biber and Susan Conrad
Why do high-level students hit a grammar plateau? The simple answer is that the rules they study in grammar class aren’t enough. To move your students out of ESL, they need more detail about how language is really used. …
Douglas Biber and Susan Conrad have an easy-to-use solution.
The Rules Work Fine Until They Don’t
Beginning ESL students learn, for example, that the Simple Present
Tense is used for regularly occurring events and the Present Progressive is
used for events happening now. This distinction serves students well
for the next couple of proficiency levels.
As your students get closer to native levels of English, they need more
nuanced information about actual use of different forms in different
contexts. This closer understanding is what separates an ESL student
from a mainstream student.
Provide More Information, Practice, and Then Apply
Students at higher proficiency levels should spend most of their time
reading, writing, listening, and speaking English. They need to take
their grammar to the next level, but the less time they spend analyzing
it, the better.
Biber and Conrad’s new book, Real Grammar, presents 52 concise grammar points. Each unit summarizes what students already know about grammar and then shows how it really works in authentic use. Students practice quickly, and then move on to production tasks. The units can be taught in any order, and the relatively small size of the book means that it can be used as an add-on to any existing high-level course.
Check out a sample unit from Real Grammar, or contact your Pearson ELL Specialist to get a sample copy of the entire book.
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