q('
Accent
aaAccent is the name given to the particular way a group of people sound when speaking English. So Scots have a different accent (sound different) than Texans or Australians. Foreign learners of English have clearly different accents when speaking the language - so Germans will sound different from Scandinavians, who in turn will sound different from Italians.

An accent is the sum of the pronunciations of the individual words the people say. In this way accent contrasts with dialect, which is concerned also with differences in vocabulary and grammar between different groups.

Accent is also the word for the small marks adorning the letters of certain languages like French, and used in English in imported words: rôle, naïveté, etc. (These marks are sometimes called diacritics.)
ESL students inevitably speak English with an accent in their first year or so of learning the language, but this rarely prevents comprehension and they usually lose it as they become fluent.

A more serious difficulty for them is understanding the different accents of their various teachers. At Frankfurt International School they have to adjust lesson by lesson to hearing English spoken by Britons (including Scots and Welsh), Irish, Americans, Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, South Africans, Germans, Spaniards, etc. This is quite an undertaking when you have only been learning the language for a month or so!
'); q('
Acronym
An acronym is a compound noun that has been abbreviated to form a single word by using the initial letters of its constituent parts. For example: National Aeronautical and Space Agency = NASA.

The strict definition of acronym allows only such abbreviations that are pronounced as words, not letter by letter. So NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) is an acronym, but UN (United Nations) is not. It seems, however, that a looser definition is taking hold, and most people nowadays would regard BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) , ESL (English as a second language) and FIS (Frankfurt International School) as acronyms.
Acronyms are a typical feature of jargon and as such can be impenetrable to ESL students. FIS acronyms such as ATL (Approaches to Learning), CAS (Creativity Action and Service), IBMYP (International Baccalaureate Middle Years Programme) are often hard to remember, let alone fully understand. Indeed, it is quite possible that some ESL students may not know what ESL means!

Even many native speakers of English are not aware that a few of the words they have encountered in science or geography class are in fact acronyms:There are a huge number of acronyms in existence. A recent edition of an acronym dictionary contains more than half a million entries. Maybe we need a campaign for the restriction of acronym proliferation!
'); q('
Adjective
Adjectives are one of the 9 parts of speech. They are used to describe nouns, and can either be used attributively:or predicatively:There are a few special adjectives in formal English which follow the noun, for example the body politic or malice aforethought.
Beginning ESL students don\'t usually have many problems with adjectives in English because they are not inflected, except - some of them - in the comparative and superlative. Compare this with German, where adjectives take on different forms according to the case and gender of the noun that they qualify.

However, more advanced students need to learn that there is an expected adjectival order - so it has to be a black leather bag, not a leather black bag. They must also learn how to punctuate strings of adjectives - so it cannot be a black, leather bag. And, a silly little girl has a different meaning to a silly, little girl.

Another discovery they will make is that some adjectives can only be used attributively, while others can only be used predicatively. In fact, only is a good example. You can say: She is an only child, but not That child is only. Conversely, you can say The girl is afraid, but not She is an afraid girl.
'); q('
Adverbs
Adverbs are one of the 9 parts of speech. They are a very mixed bag, and grammarians often disagree whether a particular word or phrase should be classed as an adverb. There is agreement however that they are used to describe manner (beautifully, with the utmost care ), time (now, every Tuesday after school), place (here, behind the bicycle sheds at the back of the sports hall) and degree (extremely, to a large extent). Most adverbs of manner end in -ly:
Some ESL students do not use adverbs of manner correctly because they do not expect them to be different from their adjectival form. So German students are quite likely to write:
'); q('
Affix: prefix / suffix
An affix is a short combination of letters (morpheme) that is added to a root/stem to produce a new word. A prefix is an affix added to the beginning of a root; and a suffix is an affix added at the end of a root.

For example, consider the root new. It can be modified by the prefix re- and the suffixes -ness or -ly. The word renew can itself be modified by the prefix non- and the suffix -able to produce non-renewable.

Generally speaking, prefixes modify the meaning and suffixes modify the grammar (part of speech) of the words they are affixed to; eg. unhappy, happiness.

Grammarians would say that the word unhappiness has derived from the word happy
Many languages have similar systems of affixation to English, so the concept is not difficult for ESL students. They may be a little troubled at first by the variety of prefixes that turn words into their opposites, e.g. unlucky, impolite, disagree, inaccurate, irregular, etc.. However, they can be taught the meanings of the common affixes, and thereby can readily understand long and seemingly difficult words such as inaudibility or monolingualism.
'); q('
Apposition
Apposition is more clearly explained by examples than by attempting a definition. In the following sentences the italicized words are said to be in apposition. Note how the appositional phrase, usually a noun phrase, is separated off from the rest of the sentence by commas:
Apposition, a typical feature of academic texts, can make reading comprehension quite problematic for ESL students. A probable reason for this is that apposition is a kind of ellipsis; and it is often difficult for inexperienced readers or readers with limited English proficiency to \'supply\' the missing words in any given text. It is important therefore that ESL students are trained to recognize appposition and understand its function.

There is special type of apposition that is introduced by the word or and not separated off by commas. Here are some examples from fictive exam papers: The problem here for ESL students is that the word or does not introduce an alternative as it usually does; e.g. Write about the causes of the American Revolution or the French Revolution. Instead, or introduces an appository phrase from which the words (\", also called\") have been elided. For example, Draw a bar graph (also called a bar chart) to show your results.This kind of apposition can cause difficulties for ESL students with limited vocabulary or reading skills.
'); q('
Auxiliary
An auxiliary is a verb that is used together with a main verb to convey a particular meaning (e.g. create a particular tense or modality.). If I use the present simple I play chess, I convey the fact that chess is a game I play, regularly or not. However, if I want to convey that I am currently engaged in a game of chess, I need to use the auxiliary verb to be to create the present continuous tense: I\'m playing chess. I\'ll call you later.

The second sentence in the example above, I\'ll call you later, contains the auxiliary will, used mainly to talk about the future. Further auxiliaries are the verbs have and do, together with all the modal verbs: can, may, should, would, etc.
Learning how to use the auxiliary verbs correctly is one of the most difficult tasks for ESL students, particularly when there is a lack of correspondence between English and their mother tongue. For example:
'); q('
Case
Case is the name used for the different functions of nouns and pronouns in a clause or to denote their interrelationships. This typically obscure definition can more easily be understood by looking at some examples from German, which has 4 cases:So in German there are 4 different forms of the definite article for masculine nouns (der, den, dem, des) depending on the function of that noun.

In English, on the other hand, the article does not change at all; and the noun changes only in the genitive (man\'s). In contrast, the masculine pronoun in English has three different forms: Nominative - he; Accusative/Dative - him; Genitive - his.

For more about case see the entry on declension.
It is clear that students learning a highly inflected language like German, in which articles, adjectives, nouns and pronouns can change according to which case is being used, will have a great deal more trouble than students learning English. In fact the names of the different cases need never be taught to ESL students. They simply have to learn the forms of the personal pronouns in their different functions in a clause. They also have to be taught the correct placement of the apostrophe in nouns in the genitive case.
'); q('
Clause
In traditional grammar a clause is part of a sentence that contains a subject and a verb . So the sentence If you do that again, I\'ll break your neck! contains two clauses: If you do that again and I\'ll break your neck.

There are main clauses and subordinate clauses. In the following three sentences the main clause comes first:In the next three sentences the subordinate clause comes first. From these examples it can be seen that the subordinate clause is dependent on the main clause. The main clause can stand alone as a sentence but the subordinating clause cannot.
There is nothing inherently difficult in English clauses, unlike German which sends the main verb to the end of the subordinate clause. But ESL students need to be taught explicitly to vary their sentence structures by sometimes putting the subordinate clause first.

German students often want to separate main and subordinate clauses with a comma because it\'s mandatory in their language. So they write sentences such as:
'); q('
Cognate
Languages which share the same roots are called cognate languages. So English and German, which are both Germanic languages, have a large number of cognates. Cognates are words which sound, or are written, the same (or almost the same) in two or more languages. September-September; winter-Winter; garden-Garten; house-Haus; green-grün are English-German cognates.
Cognates are a great help to ESL students whose mother-tongue is a cognate language with English. They can quickly build a good vocabulary, and will be pleasantly surprised to see how many science or mathematics words they can recognize. Of course, Japanese or Korean students do not have this advantage.

However, there is the problem of false cognates, sometimes called false friends. These are words that appear to be cognates but are in fact derived from different roots and do not mean the same. The German word also does not mean also but therefore; bekommen does not mean become but receive. German students often make mistakes with false cognates.
'); q('
Cohesion
A text is said to have cohesion if the writer is successful in convincing the reader that it is not just a series of sentences stuck together at random. There are a number of devices that writers employ to give a text cohesion. A common one is the use of pronouns; so, for example, the pronoun it in the first sentence of this entry refers back to the word text, its referent. The phrase a common one in the previous sentence refers back to the words a number of devices in the sentence before.

In fact, cohesion alone is not enough to create comprehensible text; the following passage is highly cohesive but it has no coherence.
Masako comes to school by bus. School contains four consonants. This is how many legs my cats have. The cats sat on the mat. Its plural is mats.
Picking out the cohesive markers and identifying their referents is a major problem for ESL students. Academic writing is full of cohesive devices that authors use to pack information densely into their texts. (For a better understanding of the difficulties faced by ESL students in understanding such texts, read my detailed analysis of cohesion in a passage from a science book.)

The other main problem for ESL students is employing cohesive markers appropriately and correctly in their own writing. Below are two short authentic passages from a composition by a grade 6 ESL student, showing how cohesion can be difficult to achieve. In the first extract the student has failed to replace with the noun with a pronoun in the second sentence. This thwarts the expectations of the experienced reader.
Joseph Merrick was called elephant man. Joseph Merrick was born in 1862 in city called Leicester.
The next extract from the same student shows how failure to apply the cohesive markers correctly can produce text that is incoherent.
His mother\'s name was Mary Potterton. She was a country girl and she went to school until she was 12. Because her house was so poor and her father never learned how to write. He wanted her daughter to learn much as she could but she was not rich so she could go until she was 12. He was born normal but when he was 5 years old, he had a disease and became like an elephant.
'); q('
Collocation
Collocation comes from co - location and refers to the fact that many words form strong associations with some words but not with others. This rather anthropomorphic definition means simply that there are certain word combinations that we expect and others that surprise us. Here are some expected word combinations:And here are some less expected ones:Linguists would say that the words milky and tea are strong collocates = i.e. they are very often found together in naturally-occuring language in a way that the words white and tea are not. Conversely, white coffee is a common combination.

It is important to realize that just because a word combination is unexpected does not mean that it is necessarily wrong. Indeed, writers and speakers often put words together in surprising ways in order to avoid cliché or to create a particular effect.
Native speakers have an intuitive sense of whether a particular combination of words is expected or not. ESL students do not have this sense and therefore make many mistakes of collocation in their writing and speaking. Here are just a few of the errors caused by faulty collocation involving the verbs do and make:When students ask why sentences such as the last one are wrong, they are often frustrated with the answer: \"We just don\'t say it that way in English!\" There are no helpful rules that they can learn; they just have to painstakingly acquire the collocational intuition that native-speakers have.

Unfortunately, many dictionaries and thesauri do not give collocational information, or they do not give it explicitly, so students have no reliable way of knowing if the particular combination they have chosen for their writing is the expected one.

Read more about collocation .
'); q('
Colloquial
Colloquial language is everyday language, particularly conversational language, as opposed to formal written language. Colloquial English is the English you will hear when native speakers are chatting on the playground or at the office photocopier. Loo is a colloquial word, in contrast to the much more formal lavatory or the neutral toilet.
A common mistake made by the ESL student is to use a colloquial term when a more formal one is required. For example, he hears fellow students say What? as a way of requesting the repetition of a question or instruction, and he uses it the next time he doesn\'t understand what the teacher has asked him to do.

Another ESL student, inexperienced or untrained in the correct use of her dictionary, might search for the English equivalent of a Japanese word she wants to use in her essay and produce a sentence like: At the end of his life he became very bonkers and had to go to a mental asylum. Obviously the colloquial bonkers is inappropriate in a formal composition. Mistakes of this kind are mistakes of register or style.

There are more examples of colloquial language in the entry on slang.
'); q('
Comparative-Superlative
Hot-hotter-hottest shows the adjective hot in its simple-comparative-superlative forms. Not only do adjectives have a comparative and superlative form, but adverbs do too: quickly-more quickly-most quickly.
ESL students have difficulties with two aspects of this system:
'); q('
Complement
Complements are one of the five clause components alongside subject, verb, object and adverbial or adjunct. Complements are ways of describing or identifying things or people and are used after link verbs or copulas, like to be or to seem. In the following sentences the complements are shown in italics.
There is nothing difficult for ESL students about the system of complementation in English. They may be tempted, however, to use an adverb instead of an adjective after sense copulas. So they might say: You look very well today! when they mean You look very good. Other examples:
'); q('
Conditional
A conditional sentence is a sentence in which the speaker expresses the idea that something will happen or would have happened under certain conditions. Conditional sentences contain the words if or, less commonly, unless, on condition that, providing that.

Traditional English grammar books for ESL students list 3 forms of the conditional, which they call conditional 1, conditional 2 and conditional 3. Here is an example of each:In fact English is far more complex and conditional sentences that show a variation on one of these 3 forms are very common:Indeed, if does not always introduce a conditional. In the following sentence it means whenever
The conditional is difficult for ESL students because it combines conceptual and grammatical complexity. So, they find it hard to understand sentences such as the following:They also find it hard to choose the right tense or verb form in which to convey their own thoughts involving conditions past, present, future or hypothetical. For example, deciding which of the following two sentences is the appropriate one to exactly express a thought calls for a very sophisticated knowledge of how native speakers intuitively use their mother tongue:
'); q('
Conjugate
To conjugate a verb is to give its inflected forms. So, generations of British grammar-school educated students, including the writer of this entry, will forever more be able to chant: amo, amas, amat, amamus. amatis, amant. The German equivalent is ich liebe, du liebst, er/sie/es liebt, wir lieben, ihr liebt, Sie lieben, sie lieben.

See also the entry on declension, which is the listing of the inflected forms of a noun or pronoun.
Since English is a largely uninflected language, in comparison with Latin or German, there is no need to have students chant I love, you love, he/she/it loves, we love, they love. It is useful for them, however, to learn the infinitive, preterite, and past participle forms of irregular verbs; e.g. do-did-done; see-saw-seen; put-put-put etc.
'); q('
Conjunction
Conjunctions are one of the 9 parts of speech. They are used to join clauses to form sentences. There are two types of conjunction: coordinating and subordinating. Coordinating conjunctions join two clauses of equal \'value\'. The coordinating conjunctions in the following examples are shown in bold:A subordinating conjunction is used to introduce a subordinate or dependent clause:
Most ESL students do not have any particular difficulties with English conjunctions. Germans, however, quite often make mistakes like:The German word als = when is a false cognate of as. And for the single German word während, English has two words: while - conjunction and during - preposition.
'); q('
Copula
A copula is a verb that links a subject with its complement. Indeed, copulas are sometimes called linking verbs. The most frequent copula is the verb to be; some other copulas are to become, to seem, to look, to sound. Here are examples of subject-copula verb-complement sentences:
Copulas are among the commonest verbs in English and cause ESL students no particular difficulties - even to those students whose languages do not use the copula to be, like Russian.

One mistake they do make however is to use the sense copulas in the present continuous tense. So they say or write things like:
'); q('
Declension
To decline a noun or pronoun is to list its inflected forms in the various cases. So, the declension of the Latin masculine noun puer (boy) is:
 SingularPlural
Nominativepuerpuerī
Genitivepuerīpuerōrum
Dativepuerōpuerīs
Accusativepuerumpuerōs
Ablativepuerōpuerīs
See also the entry on conjugation, which is the listing of the inflected forms of a verb.
English is a largely uninflected language, so ESL students do not have to plague themselves with learning the declensions of nouns or pronouns - unlike those unfortunate children still learning Latin.
'); q('
Derivation
Derivation is concerned with the formation of new words from base elements, particularly by the process of affixation. Friend, for example, is the base element for the affixation of un-, -ly, -ness, -less, -ship etc. to produce the words friendly, friendliness, unfriendliness, friendless, friendlessness, friendship, and so on.

Derivation is one of the two major aspects of morphology. The other is inflection.
There are few* useful derivational rules that ESL students can learn to predict how words will derive from their base elements. There is no consistency, for example, in the derivations from base elements child, friend, slave, king: childhood, friendship, slavery, kingdom. But this is an aspect of English where students do not tend to make faulty inferences (unlike with inflection) and they use their dictionaries to find the words they want to use.

(* Students should learn, however, that most English adverbs are derived from the adjective by adding the suffix -ly. They can also be taught that the opposites of words beginning with p, l, and r will most likely start with the prefixes im-, il- and ir respectively.)
'); q('
Determiner (article)
The definite article the and the indefinite articles a, an belong to the group of words called determiners. Other determiners are: each, all, some, this, many, no, etc.
The English determiner system is extremely complex and causes many ESL students serious difficulties, particularly those students whose native languages do not have articles, such as Japanese, Korean or Russian. But even German students, whose article system is similar to English, make mistakes when the systems diverge. Examples:Fortunately mistakes in the use of articles rarely impede communication!
'); q('
Dialect
Dialect is the word for regional and social language differences. Accent plays a major role in distinguishing between dialects - in the UK for example, a native of Glasgow will likely sound very differently than a Londoner. However, the term dialect covers not only pronunciation, but refers primarily to differences in vocabulary and grammar. For example, a Scot will likely to refer to a young child as a wee bairn or a beautiful girl as a bonny lass. He may well say He wears the kilt. rather than He wears a kilt. etc.

Obviously there are significant differences in vocabulary and, to a lesser extent, grammar between American English and British English, but some linguists prefer to call these varieties of English rather than dialects.
In general, ESL students will be taught in a dialect that may be called Standard English, i.e. the English of the educated, middle-class native speaker, irrespective of the place of birth. They are unlikely therefore to be confronted with any variations in the grammar of what they hear or read, although they may face minor vocabulary issues. They are more likely to be troubled, termporarily at least, by the accent component of dialect. (See the entry on accent for more details).
'); q('
Discourse
The major focus of traditional grammar study has been written language, specifically the sentence, its components and their interrelationships. In the past 20 years or so, however, linguists have increasingly focused on longer passages of language, both spoken and written. Discourse is the term for \'text\' (chunks of language) that extends beyond the written sentence or the single utterance. Discourse analysis is the term for the study of extended text, of which cohesion is an essential feature.
The task for the ESL student is to become familiar with the typical features of the various discourse types (genres) in English and then learn how to construct his or her own cohesive text appropriate to those types. Here are just a few of the many examples:Of course, native speakers must learn how to create such discourses too. However, they have the advantage of being able to concentrate on structure and content, since they already have control of the language in which the discourse is to be delivered.
'); q('
Ellipsis
Ellipsis is the term for the omission of words from written and spoken language - the writer/speaker assuming that the reader/listener will nevertheless be able to understand the message. On their own, for example, the words Do you? make no sense, but in the following utterance they are perfectly clear: The listener has no trouble in interpreting the question as: Do you like German food? Ellipsis is so pervasive and expected that when words are not omitted the message takes on an extra layer of meaning. Imagine the situation, for example, where husband and wife have been arguing. The husband wants to end the row and asks: Do you want a cup of tea? If his wife answers: No, I don\'t want a cup of tea! he can be pretty sure that she is in no mood to be conciliatory.
Communication would be much more cumbersome if there were no ellipsis, but ellipsis depends on shared knowledge of language and the context in which it is being used. It is not surprising therefore if ESL students can have problems understanding ellipted texts. Consider the following introductory sentence from a maths problem:Native English speakers will generally have no problem mentally including the omitted word bought after Mary, but ESL students may interpret the sentence as John buying Mary a blue pencil.

Conversely, ESL students may have problems with the production of correctly elided utterances. A student who replies to the teacher\'s question: Do you know the answer? with Yes, I know! does not yet have command of English ellipsis.
'); q('
Etymology
Etymology is concerned with the origin, formation and development of words. So the English television is based on the Ancient Greek word tēle- (far) and the Latin vīsiō- (sight). Supercilious comes from the Latin supercilium = eyebrow, with super having the meaning of above. So supercilious literally means something like raised eyebrow. The word mausoleum comes from the name of the Greek king Mausōlus, in whose honour a great tomb, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, was erected in the year 353BC.

Of course not all English words have Greek or Latin etymologies. A large number come from Norse, Anglo-Saxon or French, which was introduced following the Norman conquest of England in 1066. There have also been more recent imports from most of the world\'s major languages. Etymology is a fascinating (from the Latin fascināre = bewitch, put a spell on) field of study!
ESL students are always pleased to discover English words that have been borrowed from their own mother tongues: tsunami (Japanese), kindergarten (German), cannibal (Spanish) ketchup (Malay), landscape (Dutch), etc.

A great deal of the vocabulary that ESL students encounter in the texts they must read in science, history, economics etc. has a Greek or Latin etymology. It is very useful, therefore, if they can learn the meanings of morphemes such as -mono-, -phon-, -aud-. See the entry on prefixes for more on this.
'); q('
Euphemism
People use euphemisms when the more explicit term would be inappropriate or cause offence. Euphemisms are commonly encountered in the following spheres: school, war, sex, death, body functions. Language that is described as politically correct abounds in euphemisms.

Here are some examples of explicit terms followed by their euphemistic alternatives:
Euphemisms are a kind of idiomatic language, and as such can be very difficult for ESL students to understand. Moreover, it takes many years of exposure to English to build up a sense of when a euphemism is appropriate in a given situation, and which of the often many alternatives to use.
'); q('
Finite
Most English verbs have 4 or 5 forms. For example the verb to work - work, works, worked, working; or the verb to write: write, writes, wrote, written, writing. Verb forms can be classified as either finite or non-finite. The finite forms are those that can be used alone and where the form itself shows tense, person or number . Non-finite verb forms require an auxiliary to show tense, person or number. So the verb works in the sentence She works in a bank. is finite - it shows tense and number. In contrast, the verb form writing is non-finite, since it gives no indication of tense, number or person. Only when an auxiliary is used does the tense or number etc. become apparent. For example:
Mastering the selection of the correct English verb tense and form is a huge task for ESL students, but they can do so without ever hearing the words finite or non-finite.
'); q('
Gender
The term gender refers to the classification of nouns by sex (masculine / feminine), or absence of it (neuter). Languages differ in the way that gender is indicated grammatically. In French, for example, nouns are either le (masculine) or la (feminine). In German nouns can be der (masculine), die (feminine) or das (neuter). English, by contrast, does not divide nouns up in this way: it has the single definite article the. However English does indicate gender in the pronouns: he - she - it; and in the endings of some nouns: waiter - waitress, actor - actress.
At last an aspect of English that is easy for the ESL student! You might hear the beginner say something like: Where is my pencil case? Someone take her. But unlike the poor learner of German they never have to plague themselves with questions like: Is a spoon masculine, feminine or neuter*? Adjectives stay the same regardless of the gender of the noun they qualify (unlike in French) and verb endings do not change according to the gender of the subject (as in Russian).

* In fact, in German spoon (Löffel) is masculine, fork is feminine and knife is neuter - and girl Mädchen is also neuter!
'); q('
Gerund
The gerund is the -ing form of a verb functioning as a noun. The words in italics in the following sentences are gerunds:
It is not difficult for ESL students to create gerunds that function as the subject of a sentence, as in the first 3 examples above. English grammar is very difficult, however, when the verb is used in combination with another verb to function as the object, as in examples 4 and 5 above. In such circumstances the student has to choose between the gerund and the infinitive. Unfortunately there are no useful rules that could facilitate the choice - each combination has to be learned separately:Often enough when both the gerund and the infinitive are possible, the sentences have different meanings. Here are some examples:Read more about the gerund and do some quizzes.
'); q('
Homophone
A homophone is a word that is pronounced the same as another word but has a different spelling and different meaning. Common homophones are to/too/two; their/there/they\'re; meat/meet; no/know; poor/pour/pore/paw. English is full of homophones.

Contrast homophones with homographs, which are words that have the same spelling but different pronunciations; e.g. row (a boat) / row (a quarrel); lead (show the way) / lead (a metal).

Contrast also homophones with homonyms, which are words with the same pronunciation and spelling but different meanings: e.g. light (lamp) / light (not heavy); row (line) / row (a boat).
ESL students, particularly those who have heard the language for a long time before seeing it written, often make homophone mistakes. But so do native speakers, who mix words like break/brake; lead/led, or do not notice that they have switched there/their or its/it\'s etc. A problem is that computer spellchecks do not catch this type of spelling error.

Homographs and homonyms in the texts they read can cause ESL students problems. They see a word they think they know, but on reading to the end of the sentence they realize that the word does not have the meaning they are familiar with:
'); q('
Idiom
An idiom is an expression that has a different meaning from the sum of its words. So the words Don\'t let the cat out of the bag could conceivably be a request not to release a trapped cat, but are far more likely to mean: Don\'t tell anyone the secret. Here are some more idioms:Phrasal verbs are also idioms. For example, the words put down could be meant literally, as in Please put down that cat = i.e. put it on the floor. Or they could be used idiomatically as in: She\'s always putting me down! or I had to have my cat put down.
Idioms can be very difficult for ESL students, because they can hear or read a string of words that they know and still have no idea what the speaker or writer means; i.e. they don\'t understand why they don\'t understand!

The difficulty is not over once the student has established that she is dealing with an idiom because idioms are often difficult to find in dictionaries - students may not know which word to look up.

And finally, ESL students find using idioms themselves highly problematic. A student might have learned a common idiom for to die but not understand the shocked reaction of his teacher when he tells her: I have to go back to Korea at the weekend. My grandmother has kicked the bucket. Most idioms are \'fixed\' and any variation produces risible results, as in the case of the apocryphal student who wrote on his goal-setting sheet: My work went to the dog last term. I will keep my nose by the grindstone in future.
'); q('
Imperative
The imperative is the verb mood conveying a command. The following are all imperatives:
There is nothing difficult about the imperative for ESL students. In fact, one language teaching methodology, TPR (Total Physical Response), bases its instruction in the first months of the course on students hearing and using the imperative:
'); q('
Indicative
The indicative is one of the three or four verb moods. It is sometimes called the declarative. The indicative is used to give information, express an opinion, make a promise, etc.
The varying difficulties ESL students have with the indicative are due mainly to problems with verb tenses, use of articles, and syntax. Consult those entries for more details.
'); q('
Infinitive
The infinitive is the uninflected or base form of the verb. This is the form that is listed in dictionaries. The infinitive sometimes is and sometimes is not preceded by the word to:
The main problem for ESL students in this aspect of English grammar is knowing when to use the infinitive with to, when to use it without to, and when they need the gerund or -ing verb form. There are no useful rules to help the students; the system is virtually random and they must learn verb by verb. For example, both these sentences are possible: But only one in each of the following pairs of sentences is correct: Similarly confusing is the fact that these two sentences have the same meaning:But these two do not - in fact they are opposites:
'); q('
Inflection
Inflection is concerned with the way in which the endings of words change when they take on a new grammatical function. In English, for example, eat changes to ate in the past tense, and hot changes to hotter in its comparative form. English adjectives do not inflect, unlike in German where the ending changes according to the gender and case of the noun that the adjective qualifies.

Inflection is one of the two major aspects of morphology. The other is derivation.
Learning the inflections of a new language is an essential grammatical task for the student. English, in which the functions of words are indicated by their position in the sentence (see SVO), has far fewer inflections than German or Russian. However, a significant number of the mistakes that beginning ESL students make are in wrongly inflected verbs, adjectives and nouns. Errors such as the following are typical:
'); q('
Interjection
Interjections are one of the nine parts of speech - some modern grammarians classify them as single-word sentences. Interjections are words that usually express an emotion and are followed by an exclamation mark. Contrast interjections with exclamations. Here are some common interjections:
Interjections are not difficult. ESL students usually have fun learning and using them.
'); q('
Interrogative
An interrogative word is a question word like who? or why? An interrogative sentence is a question sentence. Some interrogative sentences do not in fact ask a question but function as statements, commands or exclamations, as in the following examples:
Interrogatives cause ESL students two main problems. Firstly, they may fail to use an auxiliary or to invert the subject and verb when asking a question. For example, they make mistakes such as:Secondly, they may have difficulties with the intonation of interrogatives and fail to correctly produce the expected changes in pitch.
'); q('
Intonation
Intonation is the word for the pitch variations that bring melody to the spoken language. It is one of the elements of prosody. Intonation is used to organise larger bodies of spoken language and to give meanings to strings of words that could be variously interpreted.

So, rising pitch at the end of the words she\'s going to have a baby would convey a surprised question; whereas the same words spoken with slightly falling intonation would denote a simple declaration of fact.

Consider also how word stress conveys meaning. Imagine one student asks another Did you steal my calculator? and receives the answer I didn\'t steal your calculator. This answer could mean 5 different things according to which word was stressed.Stressing a word that would not normally be stressed causes dissonance in the listener, and the expectation of some kind of continuation or explanation. For example, a student asking: Do we have homework? would be puzzled to receive the answer: No, you don\'t have homework.
ESL students experience varying difficulties with English intonation - depending on their mother tongues. Koreans, for example, tend to sound \'flat\' and Chinese \'sing-song\', but non-standard intonation rarely prevents listener understanding. Most ESL students pick up more usual intonation patterns after spending some time among native English speakers - particularly if the students arrive at the school at a young age.
'); q('
Jargon
Jargon is the name for the specilaized language used by different groups of people when talking about their field or subject of interest. So, computer programmers will use terms such as javascript-enabled browsers, primitive data types, OOP, XML etc. Most jargon is swarming with acronyms, and some is employed or invented with the purpose of excluding outsiders.
All school subjects have their own subject-specific vocabulary, a type of jargon, so students may be expected to learn terms such as in mathematics or . This is not a significant problem for them, because such terms are usually new to all students and will be taught by the subject teacher. Much more problematic is the pervasive school jargon that is generally not explicitly taught by any particular teacher. At Frankfurt International School we use jargon such criterion-based assessment, MYP, ATL, CAS etc. which is impenetrable to ESL stuudents (and their parents!) when they first encounter the terms.
'); q('
Lexis
Lexis is the term given to the stock of words in a language, its vocabulary. It is one of the three major language systems alongside grammar (syntax) and phonology.
Quickly building up a large vocabulary is the single most important thing for the ESL student to do. Of particular importance are the semi-technical words that abound in academic text. These are the non-subject-specific terms like furthermore, consequence, moderately, simultaneous, deteriorate, which are rarely heard in everyday colloquial language.

The entries on idioms, collocation, euphemisms, jargon, slang and pragmatics, among others, give examples of the specific problems that ESL students have in various aspects of the English lexical system.
'); q('
Modal verb
A modal verb is an auxiliary verb that is used to express obligation, intention, supposition, hypothesis, prohibition, possibility,etc. English modals are: must (have to / have got to), will, might, may, can, could, would, should, shall; with dare, need, ought to, had better and used to included by some grammarians.
Modal verbs are one of the most difficult aspects of English grammar for ESL students. In the first place they often have trouble initially in producing the correct form of the modal in different tenses than the present simple. Examples:Secondly, they often find it impossible to grasp the subtle variations in meaning implicit in the speaker\'s choice of modal. For example:Thirdly, they struggle to choose the correct modal to convey their intended meaning. In German, for example, Ich muß nicht gehen means I don\'t have to go. It is no wonder therefore if German ESL students convey this idea incorrectly in English as: I must not go.

There is a comprehensive analysis of the difficulties of English modal verbs elsewhere on this site.
'); q('
Mood
Traditional grammar has 3 verb moods: indicative (making statements), imperative (issuing commands), and subjunctive (conveying hypotheses or wishes). Some grammarians add the interrogative (asking questions) as the fourth mood.
ESL students experience varying degrees of difficulty in the correct use of verbs in the 3/4 moods. See the individual entries for details.












'); q('
Morpheme
A morpheme is the smallest part of a word that carries a separate meaning. Prefixes and suffixes are morphemes, as are roots/stems. and the -ed ending of regular verbs in the past tense. The word unhappiness, for example, contains the morphemes un (the prefix which has the function of turning a word into its opposite), happy (the stem) and ness (the suffix that conveys a state).

Contrast morphemes with syllables which are the smallest part of a word carrying a separate sound. So, although the word unhappiness has 3 morphemes, it has 4 syllables: un-ha-ppi-ness.
There are some minor issues involving English morphemes than can irritate ESL students. Examples are the numerous morphemes that turn words into their opposites; or the fact that British English uses the morpheme ed to indicate the past tense of some regular verbs, whereas American English uses t: e.g. dreamed / dreamt; learned / learnt; spelled / spelt. In general, however, this is not a difficult area for English learners. Indeed, if they memorize common prefixes and suffixes they will be better able to guess the meanings of unfamiliar words.
'); q('
Morphology
Morphology is the study of the formation and structure of words. It is one of the two major aspects of grammar, along with syntax. Morphology itself has two subdivisions: derivation (concerning word formation; for example, the formation of unfortunately from fortune) and inflection (concerning word change, especially the changes to the endings of verbs in the various tenses).
ESL students may make the occasional mistake of derivation such as . Much more common, however, are mistakes of inflection such as
'); q('
Noun
Nouns are one of the 9 parts of speech. Traditionally nouns were defined as names of people, places or things. But this defintion is now considered inadequate because it excludes nouns like justice or pity. Some modern grammarians, therefore, define nouns syntactically: i.e. nouns are preceded by adjectives, determiners or prepositions and function as the subjects or objects of sentences.

Nouns can be categorized in various ways, as below:
There is no particular reason why ESL students need to be explicitly taught all the categories listed above. It is very useful, however, for students whose mother tongue has no articles (e.g. Japanese, Korean, Russian) to be able to identify a noun as count or uncount. They will then have a better chance of correctly preceding the noun with a, the (or nothing), as appropriate.

One aspect of English grammar that causes problems is the predilection for nominalization. Nominalization, the making of a noun from a different part of speech, is prevalent in academic texts and can make reading comprehension difficult for ESL students. The following extracts show examples of nominalization followed by an alternative using a verb: This difficulty is compounded (literally!) when nouns are stringed one after another as in the following examples:Such monstrous constructions are particularly difficult for Spanish students, whose native language would put the head noun (pattern, report) first and then post-modify it.
'); q('
Number (Singular / Plural)
Number is the word used to classify a part of speech as singular or plural. Singular means there is one of that thing; and plural means there is more than one of that thing. Some examples will make this clear:
 SingularPlural
Nounbook / tooth / mousebooks / teeth / mice
PronounI / she / itwe / they / they
Determinerthis / that / muchthese / those / many
Verbis / was / saysare / were / say
ESL students don\'t find it difficult to learn the plural forms of singular words, even though there are many irregularities: 1 goat - 2 goats but 1 sheep - 2 sheep; 1 thief - 2 thieves but 1 chief - 2 chiefs, etc. However they make lots of mistakes of agreement between the word classes (parts of speech) listed in blue above. Here are some typical examples:Some ESL students, German native speakers for example, make mistakes in the use of singular and plural that are caused by faulty inference from their mother tongue:Native speakers also make what would once have been called mistakes of agreement when they say or write things like:The following common (British English) practice of combining a singular noun with a plural verb is also somewhat questionable:
'); q('
Orthography
Orthography is another word for spelling. Most English words have a single written form. For example, there is only one orthodox way to spell night, tomorrow or embarrassing. There are words, however, that have more than one acceptable spelling: dreamed-dreamt, realize-realise, hello-hallo, etc. And of course there are also many words that are spelled diffierently in the different English dialects (particularly British English and American English). So we have: theatre-theater, travelling-traveling, skilful-skillful, colour-color, aluminium-aluminum, etc.

Spelling is one of the most difficult aspects of English, in contrast with German or Turkish, where a particular phoneme has an almost completely predictable written form. There are a few helpful spelling patterns (rules) in English, but most patterns have a large number of exceptions. Even literate, highly-educated native speakers of English have problems with orthography and need to use a dictionary or run a computer spell-check to ensure that their writing is mistake-free.
In some ways ESL students have an easier job than native speakers because they often learn the spelling of a word simultaneously with hearing it for the first time. So they do not make a false hypothesis on how it should be written. However, they oftenOrthography is sometimnes used as meaning the writing system of a language. So English has a different system (alphabet) than Russian or Chinese. It places words from left to write, top to bottom, unlike Hebrew or Japanese. ESL students whose native language has a different orthography than English sometimes have trouble at first with
'); q('
Parse
To parse a sentence is to state its structure and identify the part of speech/function of every word in it. Here is an example of the parsing of the very simple sentence She forgot: The ability to parse a sentence correctly was for many years a requirement of entry to British elite universities and to the upper echelons of the civil service. The practice was therefore inflicted on generations of grammar school pupils.
Fortunately there is no need for ESL students to be able to parse. It is important, however, for them to have a knowledge of the names of the parts of speech and a basic understanding of their functions. This is so they can share the language of language with their teacher, facilitating discussions of style, error prevention and correction, etc.
'); q('
Participle
A participle is the verb form that is used with an auxiliary to create a particular tense. There are two participles: present and past. The present participle always ends in -ing, doing, being, playing and so on. The past participle ends in -ed for regular verbs, played, worked, collected etc., and has many different forms in irregular verbs, done, been, hit, written, etc.

The present participle is used in the continuous or progressive tenses and the past participle in the perfect tenses and the passive.
Although beginning ESL students often fail to use the correct form of the participle, there is nothing inherently difficult in the concept. Many other languages have participles and the irregular ones can easily be learned by chanting: do-did-done (doing); see-saw-seen (seeing), etc. What causes huge problems however is knowing which tense (and hence which participle, if any) to use to convey a particular meaning. See the entry on tense for some examples of these problems.

One minor irritation for ESL students is that British English (BE) and American English (AE) do not always agree of the spelling of the present and past participles:
'); q('
Passive
The passive voice is the counterpart to the active voice. Crudely speaking, in the active voice the subject of the sentence is doing something. In the passive the subject is having something done to him, her or it.
ESL students often fail to use the passive correctly. Sentences such as the following are common: This kind of purely grammatical error disappears as they learn more English. A subtler difficulty, however, is knowing when the passive is the more appropriate choice than the active. Many older grammar books give decontextualised practice of converting active sentences to the passive. ESL student may infer from this that there is an open choice in every situation between the active and the passive. This is simply not the case. The sentence Can you lend me the pen? sounds ridiculous in the passive: Can the pen be lent by you to me?

But despite the admonitions of style gurus, including Microsoft Word in its grammar check, that the passive should be avoided wherever possible, it is often stylistically the right choice - as in the current sentence. It would also be ridiculous to say, for example, My mother bore me in 1951.
'); q('
Person
A written or spoken statement or question can have three possible subjects: the subject is the speaker him- or herself; the subject is someone else whom the speaker is addressing directly; the subject is a third party or thing. Person is the term for this 3-part categorization.

The way the speaker indicates the subject is by use of the pronouns: I, you, she, it, we, they, etc. - dependent on whether the subject is singular or plural. Here is an overview:

 SingularPlural
First personI seeWe see
Second personYou seeYou see
Third personHe/she/it seesThey see
Finns and Koreans may refer to boys as she or girls as he, since their languages have a single 3rd-person pronoun. Generally, however, ESL students do not have difficulty with this aspect of English. Indeed many of them are delighted to discover that there is only one 2nd person pronoun in English. Contrast this with German which has three, and Japanese which has four, dependent on the identity of the person or people being addressed, and where it is easy to offend the addressee/s by the wrong choice.

The concept of person is a useful one to make explicit to ESL students since they are likely to encounter it again in mainstream English when the teacher talks about first-person or third-person narratives.
'); q('
Phoneme
Phoneme is the term for the smallest unit of sound in a language. So the word pet, for example, contains the three phonemes p - e - t; and the word tape has the three phonemes t - a - p.

Received pronunciation, the name for the dialect spoken by the educated middle class in England, has a total of 44 phonemes: 22 consonants, 14 vowels and 8 dipthongs.
Some English phonemes are very difficult for ESL students to say correctly. This is because they do not need to produce those sounds in their own languages and their vocal organs are not used to getting into the right configuration. A typical example is the inability of Japanese students to pronounce the r phoneme, as in rice or grammar. Problematic for some German native speakers is the phoneme w as in we or water. And ESL students of many nationalities have problems with the phonemes at the beginning of th words like thin and then.
'); q('
Phonetics
Phonetics is the description and classification of speech sounds, particularly how these sounds are produced, transmitted and received. Phonetics needs to be contrasted with phonology, which is the study of the speech sounds used in a particular language.

See also the entry on prosody, which concerns itself with how speech sounds combine in words and sentences to create meaning.
Students whose mother tongues are phonologically different from English can have problems even hearing some of the English phonemes, let alone producing them correctly. The classic example is the Japanese failure to distinguish between the English consonants r and l, which can make it sound like they have lice for breakfast and don\'t like glamour.

Many ESL students who are able to form grammatically accurate sentences in their minds fail to communicate clearly because of problems with the English sound system.
'); q('
Phrasal verb
A phrasal verb is a combination of a standard verb like make or put with one or two particles. In some cases the particle is an adverb like away, together and in others it is a preposition like through, in. Here are a few examples of the thousands of English phrasal verbs: pass away, pull together, fall through, make do with, put down to.
Phrasal verbs are one of the most difficult aspects for learners of the English language. There are four main reasons for this:

Firstly, they are extremely common in everyday spoken and informal written language. Learners will often sound pompous or ridiculous if they do not use them. Imagine, for example, your wife telling you: Oh, do desist from talking! instead of Oh, do shut up! or Oh, do belt up! or Oh, do pipe down!

Secondly, in many cases the meaning of the phrasal verb cannot be deduced from its elements, i.e., it is being used idiomatically. So, for example, the phrasal verb to put down may have the literal meaning of to put down on the table or floor, but it could also mean to make someone feel small, to criticize and humiliate them.

Thirdly, many phrasal verbs are polysemous; i.e., they have more than one meaning. So not only does to put down have its literal and its first idiomatic meaning as in the previous paragraph, but it has the second idiomatic meaning of to kill as in the sentence: I had to have my cat put down. And it has a third idiomatic meaning of stop, quash, put an end to as in the sentence: The police put down the riots with unnecessary brutality.

Fourthly, there are frequent difficulties with the grammar of phrasal verbs. For example, it is possible to say both: I put my glasses on. and I put on my glasses. But it can only be: You\'re putting me on. = You\'re trying to trick or tease me! You cannot say: You\'re putting on me. So the poor student not only has to learn the meaning of the phrasal verb but also how to use it correctly.

The Collins Cobuild Dictionary of Phrasal Verbs is recommended for anyone who wants to delve deeper into this extremely important but difficult aspect of English grammar.
'); q('
Phrase
Modern grammarians are not in agreement on what constitutes a phrase or how phrases should be named, but for non-linguists the following definition is good enough: A phrase is a group of words within a clause or a sentence that make up a single entity and have a meaning. So the words an old man with gray hair is a phrase, but the words seen an old man in the is not.

Here are some examples of phrases with different functions:Phrases are often the result of elliding a clause. So, for example, the last two phrases above could be expanded as:
The ability to produce complex or ellided phrases correctly does not usually develop in ESL students until their second or third year of learning English. They often also have difficulties recognizing phrases as single entities in what they read or hear. Phrasal verbs such as put down to .. or make do with .. can cause them enormous problems.
'); q('
Pragmatics
The study of words, phrases and sentences as they are used in specific contexts is a branch of semantics called pragmatics. Consider the situation where Jane has paid a visit to her friend Sally. On entering the living room Jane says: Wow, it\'s a bit chilly in here today! She would be surprised and perhaps a little irritated if her friend replied: Yes, it is, isn\'t it! and then went on to talk about something else. Jane intended her statement as a polite request for Sally to shut the window and had every confidence that it would be interpreted as such. Hence her irritation.Here are some further sentences with their corresponding implied meanings:School reports are a classic hunting ground for pragmatists:ESL students often make pragmatic mistakes. They may have heard native-speakers say What? in response to something they didn\'t understand, but have not yet learned that this is not an appropriate reply to a teacher\'s question.
'); q('
Predicate
In traditional grammar predicate is the term for the part of a sentence that remains when the subject is removed. The subject is the focus of the sentence, and the predicate, consisting always at least of the main verb, supplies information about the subject. Following are some examples. (See SVO for more information about typical English sentence structure.)

SubjectPredicate
Iknow!

My brotherlives in London.

The student who drew graffiti on the walls of the girls\' toilets was suspended.

Hehas never enjoyed getting up early, especially on cold, winter mornings.

However, there are many sentences where such a neat division into subject/predicate does not work (e.g., It has been snowing all morning. - it cannot satisfactorily be designated the subject.) So modern grammarians have found different ways to analyse and name the various parts of a sentence (e.g. given / new; theme / rheme).
In producing written and spoken English, it is important that ESL students, like all other students, are clear in their minds who or what they want to talk about (the subject) and what they want to say about him/her/it (the predicate). However, knowing the term predicate will not in itself help them to express themselves more clearly or accuately.
'); q('
Preposition
Prepositions are one of the 9 parts of speech. They often introduce an expression of place or time: under the bed, on the wall, in January, at the weekend. They are also used after adjectives and verbs in certain fixed expressions like: tired of, angry about, to give up, to make do with.

There are quite a few multi-word prepositions, e.g. in front of, close to, by means of, in accordance with.
Prepositions can be difficult for ESL students because very often there is no one-to-one transference from their own language. Here are some examples from German:Prepositions that link with verbs to form idioms are extremely troublesome for ESL students, especially because they are so prevalent in spoken language. Here are a few of these idioms, also known as phrasal verbs: to stand for, to get at, to go about, to get along with, to zero in on, to be in for.
'); q('
Pronoun
Pronouns are one of the 8 or 9 parts of speech (word classes). Of course, modern grammarians do not fully agree on the definition of a pronoun and which words should be so classed. Traditionally pronouns have been defined as \'standing for\' or \'replacing nouns\', and this is probably good enough for non-linguists. Here are some of the ways that they can be categorized:
Pronouns are not particularly difficult for ESL students. English does not have three different words for you as German does: du (you - informal address to one friend), ihr (you - informal address to two or more friends), Sie (you - formal address to one or more people). Some ESL students are native speakers of languages that don\'t have separate pronouns for he and she, but this rarely causes lasting problems. Some students might be momentarily unsettled by the use of their in the following sentence: and may be surprised by thou, thee, thy in old English texts.

The main difficulties ESL students have in using pronouns, however, are the same ones that native speakers experience; i.e. in ensuring that they are unambiguous. Here are some sentences in which it is not sufficiently clear who or what the pronoun refers to:
'); q('
Pronunciation
Pronunciation is the term for the way that the individual words of a language are spoken. Physically, pronunciation results from the lips, palate, tongue, larynx, lungs etc. operating together to produce sound. We have to get the vocal organs working in thoroughly unfamiliar ways when we learn a new language - this is why is it can be impossible for adults, whose vocal system is fossilized, to pronounce certain foreign words correctly.

A native speaker\'s pronunciation of English words depends very strongly on his or her regional and social background. So for example, American English speakers are likely to say the simple word ate to rhyme with met, British English speakers to rhyme with mate.

Accent is the term for the sum of the pronunciations of words in the native or foreign language.
Some of the sounds (phonemes) of English do not exist in other languages, so it is no wonder that ESL students have trouble pronouncing words with those sounds. For example, the th- (θ / ð) sounds in the words thin and then do not exist in German or Japanese. Many students have problems with the numerous English dipthongs, either under- or overpronouncing them; e.g. cot or co-at for coat. (A dipthong is a vowel that has a two-part sound, such as in buy, which sounds like bi-ee or so like so-o.)

Embarrassment about difficulties with pronunciation is one of the reasons why some ESL students may remain silent for a long time in their mainstream classroom, even after their knowledge of English grammar and vocabulary has shown significant development.
'); q('
Prosody
Prosody is the term for those aspects of spoken language that convey meaning over and above the words themselves. Intonation (pitch) is an essential element of prosody, as are stress, speed, rhythm and silence. The essence of prosody can be captured in the admonition that no doubt all children have heard from their parents: It\'s not what you say but the way that you say it. Think of all the ways that the single word Sorry can be said!

This Preteena cartoon captures perfectly how prosody determines the meaning of any given string of spoken words:

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002155.htm
Finding the right words and producing them in the standard grammatical combination to convey clearly and accurately what they want to say is a hard enough job for ESL students, It\'s no wonder, therefore, that many of them fail to pay attention to the prosody of their communications.

See the entries on intonation and pronunciation for more information on the prosodic difficulties of the English language for non-native speakers.'); q('
Punctuation
Punctuation is the inclusion of punctuation marks or signs in writing in order to make the writing (more immediately) comprehensible to the reader. The marks, of course, include commas, apostrophes, semi-colons, exclamation marks, etc. Although there are clear-cut rules for sentence-end punctuation marks, punctuation inside sentences is to a much greater extent an expression of personal style. This is why some of the texts we read can irritate us by under- or overpunctuation, or what we regard as faulty punctuation.
ESL students with mother tongues that use the Western language script do not experience any particular difficulties with English punctuation - although Germans have to be taught how to use apostrophes to denote possession because these are not used in their language (e.g. Carl\'s book / Carls Buch).

Another thing that all ESL students must learn is that American and Britons punctuate slightly differently - they also have different words for the sentence-end punctuation mark: period, full-stop. For example, in reporting direct speech, Americans tend to use a comma and Britons a colon:In general, it can be said that modern American English texts are likely to contain more inside punctuation marks than modern British English texts.
'); q('
Register
Register is another of those language words that are defined differently by different grammarians. In one definition register refers to the specific vocabulary and language used by groups of people such as lawyers, linguists, accountants, surgeons, etc.

A second definition has it as synonymous with style. Most dictionaries include information about the register (style) of words which deviate from the neutral. Child and car, for example, are neutral, and have kid and wheels as their informal equivalents. Among the different kinds of word register are: formal, technical, taboo, slang, colloquial, archaic, obsolete, etc.
ESL students do not of course possess the native speaker\'s intuitive awareness of the register of a word and its appropriateness in a given situation. Unless they are careful in how they consult their dictionary, they may well use words that are far too formal or too colloquial in the context of the rest of the written text they are working on.

A few students may enjoy learning English taboo words, but fail to realize the enormous power to shock that these words have in certain situations.
'); q('
Reported speech
When we convey to person 2 what person 1 has told us, we can use person 1\'s exact words. This is called direct speech and in writing is indicated by speech marks. In spoken language, however, we would probably not pass on person 1\'s words exactly, but indirectly. This indirect or non-exact way of reporting what someone said is called reported speech. Here is an example:Reported speech can also be used to convey one\'s own words or thoughts:
This is quite a difficult area of English for ESL students. They often make mistakes like: Another problem is that they learn from traditional grammar books that the tense in the reported words must be shifted back. Examples: But it is perfectly permissible to pass on someone\'s words without the backshift. For example, the statement: \"I haven\'t seen her for ages.\" can be conveyed as He said he hasn\'t seen her for ages. In fact, there are subtle reasons for native speakers\' choice of tense for the verb in the reported clause. Contrast these two sentences: This is another aspect of the language where it takes ESL students a long time before they can develop the intuitive sense of the appropriate way of doing things in English.
'); q('
Semantics
Semantics is the study of the meaning of words and phrases. Synonymy is one of the many issues for semantic investigation; e.g. to determine the degrees of coldness inherent in words such as: cool, chilly, freezing, icy, nippy, bitter. Semantics overlaps with etymology when it concerns itself with how words change their meaning over time: gay, nice, etc.

How high does a hill have to be before it can be classed as a mountain? and Is a stool a chair? are questions of semantics.

A branch of semantics is pragmatics, which is the study of the meanings of language in use.
A major task for ESL students is to learn the meanings of the new words they encounter and then learn how to use those words appropriately in their own speaking and writing. Therefore they are engaging with semantics every day that they are learning English.

ESL students are confronted with an interesting aspect of semantics when they find out that there is often no one-for-one correspondence between English and their language.

For example, German has different words for male cousin (Cousin) and female cousin (Cousine), whereas English has a single word. Similarly, German has knowing a fact (wissen) and knowing a person (kennen), whereas English has just knowing. Conversely, English distinguishes between meat and flesh, whereas German has only Fleisch. And English has say and tell, while German has just sagen. This leads to mistakes like: He said me he will be late. PRICE/PRESI
'); q('
Sentence
A sentence is a string of words expressing a complete thought. This is rather a vague definition but grammarians have not been able to come up with a better one. Of course, it\'s easy to identify what a writer has considered to be a sentence because the first word will be capitalized and there will be terminating punctuation mark. However, writers, especially young and inexperienced ones, often write fragment or run-on sentences. Here is an example of each: Sentences can be categorized in 2 main ways: by their function and by their composition. Here are the four main sentence functions:The three sentence composition types, based on the number and nature of the clauses they contain, are:
ESL students generally have no more or less problem with the concept of the sentence than native speakers. They are equally likely to write incomplete or run-on sentences. But they usually benefit from explicit instruction in how to form subordinate clauses (such as relative clauses or clauses containing indirect speech) and how to integrate these correctly into their sentences.
'); q('
Slang
In its strict defintion slang is the word used to describe the language that particular groups of people use when conversing with each other. This language can be impenetrable to outsiders. The underworld, education, professional sport and medicine are just a few of the fields where slang is prevalent. A renowned form of slang (Cockney rhyming slang) is used by many inhabitants of the East End of London. They will say things like:A more general definition of slang is to regard it is as any kind of informal or colloquial language. No clear lines, then, can be drawn between slang, colloquialisms and idiom. The following expressions could be considered slang:
ESL students have two problems with slang: understanding it and using it appropriately. Slang is an essential ingredient of everyday living language, but teachers need to be sensitive to the confusion that its injudicious or over-extensive use can cause; e.g. telling an ESL student that she is too hyper or that she needs to stop pfaffing about will likely be met with a blank stare.

Getting a sense of the appopriateness of a particular term for a given situation is notoriously difficult for non-native speakers. The italicized words in the following extracts from (apocryphal) formal compositions are examples of inappropriately used slang:These are mistakes of register.
'); q('
Style
Most people in the course of a normal week will adopt a number of different styles of English according to the situation and the people they are communicating with. Clearly, parents do not talk to their baby in the same way as they talk to their older children or to each other. People talk differently and use different words when watching a football match with their friends than when making a formal presenation to their boss. A holiday postcard is written in a different style to a last will and testament.

Failure to match the language style to the occasion or to the recipient of the message is a cause for embarrassment and is the source of many a joke. It would be a mistake of style for an office worker to ask the managing director: \"So how are the wife and kids then?\" Conversely, your brother would be surprised if you asked him: \"How are your spouse and progeny?
ESL students must painstakingly acquire a sense of the correct language to use in various situations. For example, they need to know that What? is not an appropriate way to express lack of comprehension to the teacher; and that gonna and wanna are errors of style in school compositions. Most of their problems arise because the language they have acquired on the playground or from watching English TV or movies is often stylistically inappropriate in the classroom.

Read more about style.
'); q('
Subject / Object
Most English clauses contain a subject and many contain an object. The subject is who or what the sentence is about; who or what does, has or is something. The object is who or what is affected by the subject, by the doing or the having. This traditional explanation is a gross simplification but is probably good enough for non-linguists to understand the functions of the words. Following are some examples; they follow the common SVO order: In the sentences above the objects are direct objects because they are directly \'affected\' by the subject. A verb that can have a direct object is called a transitive verb.

There are also indirect objects (I), objects that are indirectly \'affected\' by the subject. An indirect object is often preceded by the preposition to:
In German, nouns, their qualifying adjectives, and pronouns take on different forms according to whether they are the subjects, direct objects or indirect objects of a sentence. This makes the language very difficult for learners. In comparison English is much simpler, but ESL students often have problems getting the word order right depending on whether the objects are nouns or pronouns. Here are some typical mistakes:
'); q('
Subjunctive
The subjunctive is one of the three moods. Whereas the indicative is used to express, deny or question facts, and the imperative is used for instructions and orders, the subjunctive expresses what could or should happen rather than what actually does or did. These stock expressions use the subjunctive:It is also used to express hypotheses, doubts, desires, suggestions, and unreal conditions:Most of the uses of the subjunctive seem stilted to British native speakers, particularly in conversational language. To Americans, on the other hand, the subjunctive sounds much more natural.
In general ESL students need not plague themselves with the subjunctive. In British English at least it is acceptable to say If I was you .. or If she was a teacher .. or I recommend that he doesn\'t go to bed so late. But they need to avoid jumping to the conclusion that their ESL teacher has made a mistake when he writes in their report: I recommend that she read more in future. Or: It is important that she be on time to class.
'); q('
SVO
SVO stands for Subject Verb Object. It is a significant feature of English syntax or word order, in which the subject usually comes before the main verb which comes before the object . For example:Because English is a largely uninflected language, there is little scope for variation on this basic word order. Contrast this with German, where there is greater structural flexibility, and meaning is determined by inflections:
ESL students rarely have problems with basic SVO. Indeed they are lucky to be spared the horrors of inflection that accompany a less rigidly structured like German or Russian. However, the rules governing the order of words in English when a sentence contains adverbs (or adverbial phrases) or indirect objects are much more complex, and can cause real difficulty.

Furthermore, advanced students may be a little surprised when they encounter expressions which show a reversal of subject/verb:
'); q('
Syntax
Syntax is concerned with the way in which words are combined to form phrases, clauses or sentences. One way that linguists show the syntactic structure of sentences is using a tree diagram such as the following:
Syntax is one of the two major aspects of grammar. The other is morphology.
English syntax is in some respects easier than the syntax of other languages. For example, ESL students do not have to ask themselves whether the adjective they want to use comes before or after the noun (as in French). Nor do they have to worry about the inversion of subject and verb or the position of the main verb at the end of subordinate clauses (as in German). English sentences conform very strongly to the SVO structure.
Many beginning ESL students, however, have a lot of problems with the use of auxiliary verbs, and make mistakes such as: I not like school. or Why you do that?. More advanced students have problems with the syntax of reported speech and make errors such as Can you please tell me what is the time? or I want to know why did you do that?
'); q('
Tag
Tags are the words or short phrases added to the end of spoken utterances. Their most common function, as question tags, is to get the conversation started, or to keep it flowing, by inviting the listener to respond: Lovely weather today, isn\'t it?

Tags serve to soften questions which could otherwise be considered too direct. Failure to use them is one of the reasons why non-native speakers can sound abrupt: Are you married? instead of the softer You\'re married, aren\'t you?
ESL students in international schools have more important things to learn than to plague themselves with this aspect of English grammar. But those ambitious non-native speakers who want or need to know how to use tags are confronted with a system of great complexity.

They can learn the general rule that a negative statement is followed by a positive tag using the same main verb, and vice versa:
  • You don\'t like her, do you?
  • I\'m doing this right, aren\'t I?
This is relatively easy, but then they have to choose the correct form of the auxiliary if the postive statement is in the simple present or preterite tense:
  • She comes from Korea, doesn\'t she?
  • You forgot your homework, didn\'t you?
But this typical reversal of the polarity does not always apply:, as in the following examples:
  • Nobody\'s seenof the Sometimes tDon\'t forget, ... ...? You think you\'re clever, ... ...? So you think you\'re clever, ... ...? And tags preceding other kinds of utterance are fairly random. In this respect the learner of German has it easy. There is only one question tag, nicht wahr. (Unfortunaly the English single-word equivalents, eh, or right as in Lovely weather today, eh? is still considered unacceptably informal in most situations.You haven\'t seen Sascha, have you? This could be a genuine question; i.e. I don\'t know if you have seen him or not and I want you to tell me. (In this case the tag would be stressed and said with rising intonation). Or it could confirming what I know to be true and expecting an response like: \"No, he hasn\'t been here all day.\" (In which case, the tag would not be stressed, and it would be said with falling intonation.) instead of

    Not all tags are question tags, as the following examples show:
    • He\'s the best, he is.
'); q('
Tense
A tense is a particular form of a verb, or its combination with an auxiliary, chosen by the speaker/writer to convey a particular meaning or time reference. So if the speaker wants to talk about his plans for the next day, he will use one of the tenses that express future time. Following is a small selection of tenses using the verb to eat:
  • I eat - present simple
  • I am eating - present continuous
  • I ate - past simple
  • I had eaten - past perfect
  • I will have eaten - future perfect
If mood and voice are treated as part of the tense system, then English can be said to have 30 or more tenses, including exotic ones like the present continuous subjunctive (If I were to be eating ..) or the future perfect continuous passive (The cake will have been being eaten ..)
One problem facing ESL students is that there is no agreement on how tenses are named. Some grammar books, for example, talk about the present continuous, while others call the same tense the present progressive. The past simple is also referred to as the simple past or the preterite; the past perfect is the pluperfect, etc.

However, there are much greater tense difficulties for the poor ESL student than inconsistent nomenclature. One serious problem arises when the student\'s native language does not contain a tense that English has, or vice versa. German, for example, has no continuous (progressive) tenses, so beginning students make mistakes such as:
  • *Where do you go now?
  • *I had a bath when he called.   (I was having a bath)
The second problem arises when there is a correspondence of tense form but not a correspondence of tense usage or meaning. So both German and English have a present perfect tense using have as the auxiliary: I have eaten the cake / ich habe den Kuchen gegessen. However, the present perfect tense is used in German for spoken narratives about the past, whereas in English it is used for finished actions that have a continuing relevance in the present; e.g. Where\'s my cake? - I have eaten it! English uses the past simple for narratives about the past. This tense mismatch results in German students making errors such as:
  • *Then I have gone home and I have eaten the cake.
The third major tense problem for ESL students arises because English has many occasions where the tense form of the verb does not correspond to the time reference. So both the present and the past tenses may be used to express an event that will take place in the future, or the past tense may be used for an action in the present. [More] Here are just three examples of this very confusing aspect of English:
  • Secretary: Can I help you? - Parent: Yes, I wanted to see the headmaster. (past tense - present meaning)
  • So I go up to him and tell him to mind his own business. (present tense - past meaning)
  • She told me she couldn\'t come to my party next week. (past tense - future meaning)
Fortunately, however, the days are long past when learners of English were expected to create monstrous tense forms such The cake would have to have been being eaten!
'); q('
Transitive/Intransitive
Some English verbs cannot be used without a direct object. For example, you cannot say: I don\'t really like. You need a direct object such as German food or her to complete the sentence. On the hand, I don\'t really know is a perfectly permissible sentence.

Verbs that require a direct object are called transitive; those that cannot be used with a direct object are called intransitive. Here are some examples; the first group of sentences contains transitive verbs, the second intransitive:
  • I saw an accident on the way to school today.
  • Why did you hit me?
  • She\'s lost her dictionary!
  • I usually walk to school.
  • She worked hard in the garden all day.
  • Have you been waiting long?
The verbs in the sentences above are exclusively transitive or intransitive. For example, like must have a direct object and can be used in the passive, whereas wait cannot have a direct object and cannot be used in the passive. There are many English verbs, however, that may take a direct object, but do not have to. For example:
  • I\'ve been painting all morning.
  • I\'ve just painted the fence.
  • I usually drive very fast!
  • Have you ever driven a bus?
  • The door opened very slowly.
  • I opened the door very slowly.
Open (but not paint or drive) is an example of a special kind of transitive/intransitive verb called an ergative verb. [More on ergative verbs]
Transitivity is one of the aspects of English verb grammar that ESL students have to master. So, for example, they need to learn that they can say What time did you arrive? (arrive is an intransitive verb), but not What time did you reach? since reach is transitive. However, compared with the enormous difficulties many students have in choosing the correct verb tense, transitivity is not a significant issue. And for younger ESL students in particular there is little benefit in knowing the terms transitive/intransitive or learning t/i verb lists.
'); q('
Verb
Verbs are one of the 8 or 9 word classes (parts of speech), and everybody knows that they are \'doing words\': eat, play, run, etc. But what about verbs like: be, have, seem? These do not exactly \'do\' anything. Obviously the traditional definition is inadequate, but instead of getting bogged down in trying to find a more exact one, let\'s look at some of the ways that verbs can be categorized:
  • Regular: work-worked-worked; use-used-used
  • Irregular: see-saw-seen; do-did-done
  • Transitive: break; hit; see
  • Intransitive: arrive; sleep; laugh
  • Modal: must; should; will; might
  • Reflexive: wash oneself; enjoy oneself; behave oneself
  • Phrasal: make up; fall through; play down
Using verbs correctly is in many ways the most important aspect of grammar for ESL students to master. Every sentence they speak or write will contain one or more verbs that must be in the appropriate tense and form. Choosing the correct verb tense to convey a particular meaning is often extremely problematic for learners of English. Also highly problematic are phrasal verbs used idiomatically.
'); q('
Word
Everybody knows what a word is! School is a word, and so is book. But what about books? Is this a different word from book or the same word in a different form? (Inflection is the name for the rules governing how words take on different forms in different grammatical uses.)

Of course, book and books are different words, but linguists needed a term for the base word from which further words are formed. The term they came up with is lexeme. So book is the lexeme for the words book and books; and see is the lexeme for see, sees, saw, seen and seeing. Lexemes, single units of meaning, can also consist of several words, e.g. kick the bucket or kill two birds with one stone.
ESL students sometimes have problems when looking up words which are quite different from their lexeme, as is often the case with irregular verbs. So, for example, if they see the word torn in a text, they are not guaranteed to find its lexeme tear unless they have a good dictionary.

They often have great difficulty understanding multiword lexemes (idioms) such as kick the bucket unless they have been trained how to recognize them and find them in their dictionary.
');