New Intermediate Student and Grammar

I'm excited to have a new adult ESL student who is at an intermediate level. Most of my students lately have been very advanced ESL students. While this is enjoyable in a lot of ways, having more to teach is even more exciting.

With my advanced ESL students, mostly we practice conversation skills and sometimes pronunciation. Only occasionally do we need to review grammar points.

With most intermediate ESL students, grammar review is also a part of our lessons, although the review is more extensive than for advanced students. I actually like grammar and enjoy teaching it.

I look forward to refreshing my English grammar teaching skills.

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Teaching "A" or "An" to ESL Students

If a noun begins with a vowel, then the article "an" is used. If it begins with a consonant, then "a" is used. This basic rule is fairly easy for ESL and EFL students to learn.

However, the more difficult point to teach is that we need to look at the pronunciation, not the spelling of the word. For example, "Lunch lasts for an hour." "Hour" begins with a consonant, but in American English, the "h" is silent, so the beginning sound is a vowel sound.

Another area students have problems with is in using initials or acronyms. For example, "Did you submit an RFP to the foundation?" Although "RFP" begins with a consonant, if I say the letter "R," it sounds like "ar". The beginning sound is a vowel sound.

I find that lots of exercises or drills are useful for reinforcing this point.

Also note, that I am assuming here that the difference between definite and indefinite articles has already been taught.

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Personal Pronouns and the Present Perfect

I met with two students today. One is an advanced ESL learner. I've been working with her for about a year. Much of the grammar we work on is review. Our major focus is conversation skills, accent reduction and pronunciation (mostly medical terms, as she is a Registered Nurse). I noticed some difficulty with Personal Pronouns, so we are reviewing them by using Azar's Understanding and Using English Grammar, chapter 8, "Pronouns." My student had some problems with the first exercise (mostly an assessment tool). We proceeded with Section 8-1, Personal Pronouns. This section provides a chart with subject pronouns, object pronouns, possessive pronouns and possessive adjectives. We also practiced identifying antecedents.

I remember having difficulty, myself, with pronouns when I studied Spanish. Memorization of each of the pronouns is necessary. This can be accomplished through written exercises (and sometimes has to be, otherwise, some students try to avoid using pronouns in spoken English) and verbal drills.

The second English language learner I tutored today is at a high beginner level. It's been 10 years since she studied English in high school in Korea. We've been working together for a couple of months. Today's lesson included the Present Perfect. I used Murphy's Basic Grammar in Use, unit 16, "Have you ever...?" I also introduced some new vocabulary phrases dealing with restaurants ("Do you take plastic?" "I'd like a doggy bag," etc.). Homework is to create a dialog between a diner and a server. (I developed this lesson plan a couple of years ago when I was studying for my TESOL certificate.)