Ron’s ESL Blogs

                                     9/25/08                                                        Liu,xiaolei                       Childhood MemoryNow, I’m a college student. But there are many things which happened in the past years. They are in my mind as if they never disappear.When I was 12 years old, my mother decided to go to the United States to get better opportunities and enhance the quality of our family’s life, so she left me in a boarding school, which was really different from what I had experienced in a regular middle school. I really had an indelible experience there. This allowed me to experience an entirely new environment, friends, and way of life.I took the bus to get to the new school. After two hours, I got off the bus. This school was in the village that was far away from my city. The bumpy road made me uncomfortable .I even remember I pulled myself very slowly through the dark road. I was a little scared. For me it seemed like something new that I’ve never experienced. First appeared in front of me was the tall building and spacious playground .I did not know what was waiting for me.The first lesson in the dormitory was to look after ourselves. Frankly speaking, I was not a good student at the beginning. Before I came to boarding school, My Mum always took care of my daily life. She would wake me up in the morning, but now I had to set several alarms to make sure I hear them in the morning; otherwise, I would miss my class. I still remember the underwear that was soaked in soapy water for the one and half months before it was finally thrown away. Almost each of the dormitories had gradually developed its own unique “fragrance”, usually a mixture of rotten fruit, unwashed socks, stinking towels and some junk food, we could tell one dormitory from another by sniffing instead of looking. Our tolerance of untidiness was amazing.However, in spite of all this, I really did make some progress. Bit by bit, I started to wash dirty clothes before they stunk, cleaned the garbage bin when it could hold no more trash, and even used brushes to refurbish the floor. The point was that I was not obeying any orders, I did every bit of the cleaning for myself, because I wanted to live in a better place. Though nothing I did could be called an achievement ,it was the first time I fully bore the consequences of my behavior, and took the responsibility. The change of life was great and wonderful. I had more time of my own and the rights to decide how I live.The school life was busy and exciting, but some tribulations I met in study. I still remember the time when I was a freshman, it is hard for me to overcome those difficulties. I insisted in my mind that I was not a shy girl, but sometimes actually I was. I was afraid to speak to my classmates on the platform, because I was worried about making mistakes. Therefore usually I did not put up my hands to ask questions presented by the teacher during the class, even if I definitely knew the answer. As time went by, I became more mature in the later years. I had tried many ways to find back the self-confidence. Fortunately I had succeeded.School was like a small community, and the dormitory was like a family. In this small community, a happy life, I had learned the personality and habits of friendly coexistence from different students and did a good job in interpersonal relationships ,and then learned to live ,and learned to grow up.

The word “open” is sometimes confusing to ESL students because it is sometimes used as a verb and sometimes used as an adjective. Some ESL students don’t see the difference between “When are you open?” and “When do you open?” When you are asked “When are you open?”, your answer should be “We are open from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.” If the question is “When do you open?”, the answer is “We open at 9:00 o’clock.” When a student doesn’t see the difference, his or her answer can be wrong. We need to make this clear to our students.  When “open” is used as an adjective, it means “a period of time”. Therefore, we usually say: “Are you open on the weekends?” We use “open” as an adjective here because we mean a period of time. But you often hear a student say “Do you open on the weekends?” When we ask about a specific point in time, we use “open” as a verb.  We say: “Do you open at 9:00 o’clock?”, but we don’t say “Are you open at 9:00 o’clock?”    -Ron Lee

One of the most common mistakes we see in ESL students’ writing is about the doubling the last letter of a verb when we add “-ing” or “-ed” to it. ESL students do not know when to double it and when not to. In students’ essays, I often see spelling mistakes like this: “planing” for “plan”, “rainning” for ”rain”, “writting” for “write”,  “enjoyying” for “enjoy”, “studing” for “study”, “prefering” for “prefer”, and “offerring” or “offer”. These mistakes show that the students have not fully understood the grammatical rules used here.

Actually, the rule is not simple. What we give our students is often the rule that is not complete. Here are a few things we need to do. First we should help students understand SYLLABLES. They need to be able to make a distinction between one-syllable verbs and two-syllable verbs. If a one-syllable verb ends with a single vowel letter + a single consonant letter, then we need to double the consonant letter before adding “-ing”. For example, “hitting”, but “eating”. We do not double “t” in “eating” because there are two vowel letters. For two-syllable verbs, what makes the difference is the stress. If the stress is on the first syllable, we’ll never double the last consonant letter; if the stress is on the second syllable, then we need to follow the rules to double or not to double the last consonant letter. That is why it is “referring”, but “offering”.  -Ron Lee

If you ask ESL students  “an university” , “a university”, which is correct, most of the students will say “an university” is correct because “u” is a vowel. This kind of mistakes occur because we did not make the rules clear to our students, who know that there are five vowel letters “a, e, i, o, u.” They believe that if a noun starts with a vowel letter, we should use “an”. Actually the rule is that if a word starts with a vowel sound, we have to use “an”. That is why we say “an SUV”, even though “S” is a consonant letter. “U” is pronounced in two ways. “a uniform”, but “an uncle”. We say “a hotel”, but “an hour” because in “hour” h is not voiced.

The article “the” is the most frequently used word in English (”a/an” is the fifth).  Therefore, we often assume that it should not be a problem to our students. Actually, articles are very difficult to learn for ESL students because in their own languages, they probably do not such a thing called “articles”.

For the definite article “the”,  ESL students want to be told when “the” is used and when “the” is not to be used. Here are the two lists I told my students.

Where ”the” needs to be used:

1. To refer to something that has already been mentioned;

e.g. There is a watch on the table. The watch belongs to our teacher.

2. When both the speaker and listener know what or which is being talked about;

e.g.  Remember to turn off the TV;

3. Something that is unique;

e.g. the sun, the moon.

4. Directions;

e.g. in the east, in the south

5. Before superlatives;

e.g. the busiest day

6. Before ordinal numbers;

e.g. the first, the second, for the first time

7. With adjectives to mean a group of people;

e.g. the rich, the old

8. With names of oceans, rivers, and mountains;

e.g. the Atlantic Ocean, the red sea, the Amazon

 9. With names of countries;

e.g. the United States, the People’s Republic of China (What we need to explain here is that “the” is used when the name of the country is composed of general English words. If the name is a proper noun which only means that country, we cannot put “the” before it. e.g. Brazil. We cannot say the Brazil.)   

Welcome to add more to the list. 

 -Ron Lee

Grammar can be taught in different ways. It all depends on the audience. That is, who is learning grammar for what? ESL students are not linguists. The purpose of their learning grammar is to improve their writing and in order to make fewer mistakes in their writings. If we keep that in mind, we will know what needs to be taught and what not. We need to understand our students’ difficulties and address their problems. Dealing with common writing mistakes is an important task we have in our grammar and writing class.

When we talk about a sentence, we tell our ESL students that a sentence should have a subject and a verb (subject + verb). This confuses our students. When we talk about parts of speech, we tell them that we have different kinds of words — nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, and conjunctions. When we talk about sentences, we also use the word “verb” to mean sentence elements.  In my classes, when I did that, I found many students were confused. They thought I was talking about parts of speech of the words, not sentence elements. I realized that I should use “subject + predicate” instead of “subject + verb” when I talk about sentence elements. I explain to them that we usually use a noun or a pronoun as a subject, a verb for predicate, and a noun or a pronoun for object. When I explained it this way, I found my students understood better what I was talking about. I think we’d better not use the word “verb” to mean a sentence element while teaching grammar.  We need to use “subject + predicate” instead of  “subject + verb”, even though “predicate” is a hard-to-remember grammar term for our students.   -Ron Lee

ESL students’ essays are terrible. They are full of mistakes and hard to read. To improve their writing, we carefully plan our lessons to teach them how to write, correct their mistakes, and make them do all kinds of exercises. To our dismay, we found that their writings are not improved much. Why? Well, there might be problems on our side. We may not be focusing on essential things that we should focus on.

Teaching them how to write is important, so is correcting the mistakes in their essays. However, one thing that is more important is that students must be given enough reading assignment. I saw some syllabi that require students to read only 50 pages one semester. That is probably not enough for any levels. ESL students must be given enough, appropriate, interesting reading materials. Our experience tells us that when a student reads more, he or she will write better.

When we talk about writing, we often talk about the writing at discourse level. We talk about the organization of an essay, how to write an introduction and a conclusion, a thesis statement, coherence, and so on. This is definitely correct and it is what we should do when we teach writing, especially at high school and college levels. However, when it comes to ESL writing, we may have to deal with it differently. The writing problems of ESL students are different from the writing problems of students of native speakers. ESL students’ writing problems are mostly at sentence and word levels. They have problems with spelling, grammar, and word usage.

 One big difference between ESL students and students of native speakers is that native students can speak English and ESL students cannot. When you can speak English correctly, generally you can write English correctly. The problem may be only how to organize sentences into paragraphs and paragraphs into an essay.  ESL students may have learned the writing skills in their native language.  They have ideas and know how to structure an essay, but their problems are grammatical errors. They don’t know how to write a sentence correctly.

For ESL students, we don’t need to worry about their writing skills at discourse level because they can be transferred from their native language.  What they need help with is at sentence level. They need to learn how to write a sentence correctly. They should be allowed to make mistakes and learn from mistakes. They need to understand what sentence is wrong, and possibly why it is wrong. Once they learned how to write sentences corrrectly, they don’t need to be taught how to organize an essay because that knowledge can be transferred from their native language.    -Ron Lee

One big problem for ESL learners learning English is that there are too many new words. If you stop to look up every new word in the dictionary, you forget what you are reading, and eventually you lose interest in reading. Thanks to answers.com for creating such a wonderful free tool — 1-Click Answers. You can download this free software at www.answers.com. Click on “Get Answers faster! Get free downloads and add-ons now.” You’ll see the software named 1-Click Answers. Follow the instructions to install the software. The version 2.3 is very stable for windows.

The program is really a wonderful tool for online readers. Once you have installed the software, you can click on any word to get its definitions and pronunciation instantly. There is no need for a dictionary any more. If your English is not good enough to understand the English definitions, there is also translation of the word available. Isn’t that great?   -Ron Lee

The most frequently used word in English is “the”. It accounts for about 7% of the ink. If you know only one word “the”, you can recognize 7% of the words in English. Of course, you can’t understand anything. But if you know 1,000 basic words, your comprehension is 72%. What happens if I know 2,000 basic words? Well, your comprehension will be increased to nearly 80%. The comprehension is 84% for 3,000 words, 89% for 5,000 words, 90% for 6,000 words, and 98% for 15,000 words.

How many words do you need to know? According to the information above, if you want to reach 90% comprehension, you need to know 6,000 common words. It is clear that we need to learn the most frequently used words first. If your goal is to study at an American university, actually the 2,000-word list plus AWL(Academic Word List of 570) can bring your academic text comprehension to 90%.

I do not recommed that you spend too much time studying vocabulary lists. You should spend some time, but not too much time there. Reading is the way to get familiar with the most frequently used words. Trying to memorize new words is boring, but reading is interesting. Read easy readers compiled for ESL learners.

 -Ron Lee

How many new words do I need to learn? This is a question often asked by ESL learners. To answer this question, we first need to agree on the definition of a new word. Do you regard “clear” “clearer”, and “clearly” as one word or three words? If we treat them as one word, we are talking about word families. Words have families. If we know one member of the family, we can recognize the rest of the family. When we talk about new words, let’s just talk about word families.

Do you know how many word families are there in a dictionary? About 55,000. How many word families does an ordinary native speaker know? About 20,000. How many words does a five-year old child know? Between 4,000 to 5,000.  

We know some words are used more frequently than other words. As an ESL learner, we should learn the most frequently used words first. Do you know which word is the most frequently used word in English? According to the General Service list by Michael West, it is “the“, the second most frequently used word is “be“, the third is “of“, the fourth is “and“, the fifth is “a“. The Dolch list contains 220 most frequently used words. A good ESL textbook always introduces the most frequently used words first. -Ron Lee

One of the difficulties in learning English is vocabulary. Students are complaining all the time that they can’t remember new words. According to research, an ESL student learns about 2,500 new words a year. That may sound like a lot, but this is just in average. You can actually learn more. How do you remember all these words? Well, it is really not that difficult. How do you know your classmates? Do you remember everyone’s face the first day? No. By the end of the semester, you know everyone well. Why? Because you see each other every day. Learning English is the same. If you want to remember the new words, you must see them often. When you do a lot of reading, you see words you learned often, and you remember the new words naturally. So remember new words in their contexts. It is easier to remember them that way, and then you know how to use them once they are remembered. 

If you’re not making good progress in learning English, maybe because you have not kept a balance between input and output. For some people, the problem is input. They don’t do enough reading. Some people rarely listen to English. They go to school, but do not read books after class. I asked my students of level 3 if they watch English TV programs regularly,  most of them shook their heads. It’s terrible. Learning English should be an enjoyable thing to do, but students are not enjoying it. They think it is a suffering, with so many new words to remember and so many grammar rules to learn and exercises to do. This needs to be changed. Go ahead to borrow some interesting, easy to read books from the library, some children’s books, I suggest. While learning English, try not to read anything in your native language. If you want to read news about yoru country, read them in English. For listening, watch your favorite English TV programs. You may want to order a DVR (Digital Video Recorder) from your cable company, and record the programs you want to watch and watch them at your convenient time. You also need an MP3 player, which is not expensive to buy these days, and download listening materials from ESL podcast sites (http://www.rong-chang.com/podcast.htm). The advantage of having an MP3 player is that you can listen to English anywhere, anytime, while walking, doing the housework, before going to sleep. All the time you spend in listening to music should now be spent in listening to English. As to output, you need to find opportunities to speak English. The most important learning principle is LEARNING BY DOING. Learning English is the same. You learn to speak English by speaking it. In a new country, try to make new friends. Learn how to start a conversation with a stranger. Go to parties on the weekend. When a salesman calls you, pick up the phone and talk to him, just make sure you don’t buy things from them. For writing practice, use your email often.  Email to your friends, to your teachers. You can also find a pen pal to write to or chat for English learning purposes (http://www.rong-chang.com/talk/talksign.htm).     

Many English learners have complained about not making much progress in learning English. One question they need to ask themselves first is: Have I kept a balance between input and output? Input means listening and reading; output means speaking and writing. For some learners, input is an issue. To learn English well, we need to read a lot and listen a lot. How much reading have you done? How much listening do you do every day? If you are an ESL/EFL student, you probably go to school twice a week or more. In your English class, you listen to the teacher, you do in-class reading, but there are other activities in class. Your English language input is probably only a few hours a week. This is not enough input to learn English well. Do you know how many new words an English student learn in a year? According to research, a full-time ESL student learns 2,500 new words a year in average. That sounds like too many new words. However it means only about 7 words a day. If you read in English, I’m sure you come across more than 7 new words a day. Therefore, don’t think you cannot learn 2,500 new words a year. You can. The problem is here. In order to know how to use the word, according to research, you have to see the word being used in different contexts 7 to 9 times. This gives you some idea of how much reading and listening you must do. In-class time is simply not enough. You need to do a lot of reading and listening out of class in order to know how to use the new words and how to use the language.

People can be “rich” in more ways than just by having a great amount of money. Think of another way that you or someone you know may be “rich” in something other than money. Explain how that person is “rich.”

People often debate the value of formal education. Some believe leaving school and going to work before graduation has advantages. Others believe success will come from staying in school. How important do you think a high school education is in today’s society? Explain your answer.

Choose one thing that you like most about yourself or about someone close to you. Explain why.

What is your favorite food? Describe it to us, and tell us why you like it.

Every now and then, an event which teaches us something new or surprising about ourselves will occur. Tell about a time when you found out something good or bad about yourself you had not known before. Tell what happened and how it changed you.

Sometimes we have to work hard to finish something we have started. Think about a time when you or someone you know did not give up on something that was important. Write about that experience.

What is the most important advice that you could give to another person? Explain why you think this advice is important.

We all remember certain people from our past, and we forget others. Think about a person you remember. Describe him or her, and explain why that person is memorable to you.

There are things we would all like to change about the world around us. Tell a story about a change you would make.

Think of a book, poem, song, or movie that you found interesting and that has had some influence in your life. Write about your choice, explaining what you found interesting and how it influenced your life.

Tell us about one TV program you are watching. Which channel? What is its name? When is it shown? What is it about? Why do you like it?

All people laugh at one time or another. Sometimes they see or hear something they think is funny or sometimes an event occurs that makes them laugh. Write about a time when something made you laugh.

There are many exciting people, things, places and events in our world. Tell about one that you think is exciting and describe why the person, thing, place or event is exciting.

Sometimes we give help, and sometimes we get help. Think of a time when you helped someone or when someone helped you. Tell a story about what happened.

Choose one character that you liked from any book, movie, or TV show. Write abut your character and why you like this character. Be sure to tell what book, movie, or TV show your character is from.

What type of movies do you like?  What is your favorite movie?  Why do you like that movie?  If you could make a movie, what would your movie be about?

You have just completed the first semester of the 2006-2007 school year.  Take a minute to check your grades on edline.  How do you feel about the grades you received?  What classes were the most difficult for you?  What did you do well this past semester?  What do you want to improve this semester?  How do you think you can do better in the classes that gave you problems?

In America and in many other countries, at the beginning of the school year, people come up with resolutions that they would like to achieve during the year.  A resolution is something you hope to do to improve your life.  For example, some people decide to go on a diet, others decide they are going to try a new activity like dancing or arts.  What are three resolutions you would like to accomplish this year?  How do you think they will improve your life?  How will you achieve these resolutions.

If you had three months to travel around the world, where would you go and what would you do?

WInter Vacation is almost here.  How are you going to spend your winter vacation?  Does your family usually do something special for the winter holidays?  Does your family celebrate Christmas or any other religious celebration during this month?  Describe what you plan to do for Winter Vacation and anything special or unique that your family does during this holiday season.

There are many famous people who made a difference in the history of your country.  Describe 3 people in the your country’s history that have made a big difference in the history of your country.  Tell their names.  What did they do that made a difference?  During what time period did they live? 

The Statue of Liberty is a famous monument in the United States.  It is meant to welcome and honor all the new immigrants coming to the United States.  People from all over the world come to visit this monument.  Describe two famous monuments or statues in your country.  What do they look like?  Why were they built?  Where are they located?  Do a lot of people visit these monuments?

What sports are the most popular in your country?  Do people go to see sporting events regularyly in your country?  Do athletes make a lot of money your country?  Who are the most famous athletes in your country?  What are your favorite sports and how often do you practice them?  Finally,  are there any sports that are popular in your country that are not played here in the U.S.?

I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving break and now I would like for you to describe what you did over Thanksgiving break.  Try to write 10 sentences about activities, people you visited, and food you ate over the Thanskgiving break.

Thanksgiving is a special holiday in the U.S. that happens every November.  On this holiday, families get together to eat a large meal and give thanks for all that they have in life.  Describe some of the people and things you are thankful to have in your life.  Tell what and who they are and how they make your life better.

Dating customs vary from country to country.  In some countries, it is not common for teenagers to date while in others it is very common.  In your country are teenagers allowed to have boyfriends and girlfriends?  If yes, at what age do people start dating?  In your country, do people of different ethnic or religious backgrounds date?  In your country is it okay for a girl to ask a boy for a date? Do parents help decide who a person is going to date? What are the typical things people do when they go on a date?  How is dating different between here and the U.S.?

Who is your favorite famous American person? What do you like about this person.  Describe the person and tell why you like them.  Try to write at least 10 sentences

With the Internet and Satellite/Cable TV, we have access to information about so many different cultures.  Many people say that cultures are becoming more and more similar.  How is your culture and American culture similar?  Try to think of at least 10 ways that American culture and your culture are similar.

What do you think about American TV shows?  How are they different from TV shows in your country?  Please describe 3 American TV shows that you like.  Tell the name of each TV show, what they are about and why you like them.  Try to write at least 10 sentences.

I am going to try to keep an online blog and have my students do it also to help them practice writing in English.  Everyday I will post a question on the board for them to copy in their blog and respond to.  I think this is a good forum for writing in English since it is public and many people will read their blogs.  Hopefully, my students will take pride in what they write and put forth their best effort.

Hello, everyone!

My nick name is Sim. I’m Japanese. I live in Chile, Latin America. When I was 10 years old, I came here, because my mum wanted to meet her family. She is chilian. I have been going to school for 2 years, but now I am studying in an English Institute. So I am writing now, because I want to improve my English.

Well…thank you very much for read my post. See you later!

Many people have stressed the importance of writing practice. A teacher may give students a lot of writnig homework in the hope of improving student’s writing skills quickly. Of course, it is natural for students to do a lot of writing in a writing class. My question: Can students improve writing without doing enough reading? 

Hello folks, my name is Kyle! I’m from Taiwan, but right now I’m already immagrated to Canada about two months ago.
In Taiwan, my best skill is Chinese Writing (Traditional Chinese). I wish I could also be the best in English Writings.
So I’ll use this website to put some articles by me. Please help me to correct the grammer, vocabulary, and phrases mistakes.
And I ‘m also want to be friend with you!
I have a lot of hobbies like soccer, painting, writing, reading books, and something stranges like Chi-Kung, Hypnosis, The Fourth Way and spiritual……
I live in Surrey (in Vancouver), live in a apartment near Kwantlen Park Secondary.
Today is my first time to write, thanks for your reading^_^
Kyle

Hi,guys:
I am Chinese and live in Xinjiang province of China.My hometown is a beautiful place which has a lot of natural wonders.It has lots of different people.They are hardworking and very clever.They can make all kinds of handcraft.
If you guys want to get something about it ,I will be glad to help you.
Waiting for your response always/

Hi,

I am new to USA. I am an Indian but my English is poor. I make a lot of grammatical mistakes. But, I want to improve my English. I want to contact someone who can check my passages and essays.

I shall be very thankful if someone will help me.

Please! Please! Please help me!

Maitri