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Elsewhere on this site: Listings of all kinds of references including grammar and style, etc.

ESL Skill Areas: Grammar

Video links

• Ali G interviewing Noam Chomsky about language at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zPHAhj_Cio
  • A more serious collection of audio and video resources associated with Noam Chomsky, some about politics, some about language (an impressive collection if you're a Chomsky fan) - http://www.chomsky.info/audionvideo.htm

Grammar Links organized alphabetically by individual contributor

• Susana Canelo lists here favorite grammar sites here: http://www.blinklist.com/susanacanelo/grammar/
• Larry Cisar's site at http://www.us.kanto-gakuen.ac.jp/dgossman/qindex.html
• Michael Coghlan has "a few things" at http://www.chariot.net.au/~michaelc/grammar/gramhome.htm
• The Guide to Grammar and Writing now dedicated to the memory of Charles Darling is maintained here: http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/ (visited Jan 4, 2008)
  • Visit the Guide to Grammar and Writing web site to get help on all the Alabama High School Graduation Exam grammar topics. http://cctc2.commnet.edu/grammar
• E.L. Easton English online has a collection of online grammar guides.at http://eleaston.com/grammar.html
• There is online ESL grammar reference and practice material http://web2.uvcs.uvic.ca/elc/studyzone/grammar.htm. This was once a Martin Holmes project, no longer under his control.
• Charles Kelly's Activities for ESL Students includes Easy, Medium, and Difficult Grammar exercises, and Grammar Quizzes about Places: http://a4esl.org/(Jan 4, 2008)
  • http://www.manythings.org/voa/
  • http://www.aitech.ac.jp/~iteslj/quizzes.grammar.html
• Daniel Kies: Modern English Grammar http://papyr.com/hypertextbooks/grammar/ , thanks to Dennis Oliver Jan 2008
• John McVicker's Grammar for English Language Users (reference, exercises & activities, special problems, help services, grammar resources) is now part of the Ohio University ESL pages at http://www.ohiou.edu/esl/english/index.html . The specific link is http://www.ohiou.edu/esl/english/grammar.html and the site includes Activities (All levels, Basic, Intermediate, Advanced), Reference, Special problems in English grammar, and Other Resources (viewed March 2001)
• Don Pearston has posted lessons in the beginner and intermediate levels at http://www.esllessons.com. On August 30, 2002 Xenu Link Sleuth reports 404 Not Found
• Internet tools for the English classroom by Dolors Permanyer has a grammar links page: http://www.xtec.es/~dpermany/globalsite/grammar.htm
• Allen Quesada has produced NetGrammar, his Master's project providing extensive grammar practice (15 units) through a great variety of reading, writing and listening activities. It is suitable for self-directed learning of grammar and/or as an extension to regular classwork at an Intermediate level of proficiency. The web site was found Jan 2008 at: http://netgrammar.altec.org/ - The Tower Tip Sheet had this to say about NetGrammar in November, 1999: "NetGrammar is an excellent new free online grammar course for intermediate students. The course has 15 units. Each unit includes a grammar lesson, and listening, reading, and writing activities. NetGrammar is great for home study, but if you're doing the course as part of a class, it's easy to send your answers to your teacher. The course is easy to use, with lots of help if you get confused. This is a beta (test) version, so after you try the course, you can help make the course better by answering a few questions on the feedback page."
• Ann Salzmann: Grammar Points http://tinyurl.com/yv6u6j , thanks to Dennis Oliver Jan 2008
• There is a list of Preposition-Dependent Verbs and Adjectives posted by Ricardo Schütz at http://www.english.sk.com.br/sk-pdv.html (viewed March 2001)
• The Edunet 'Hypertext English Language Practice' by Richard Side and the Eckersley School of English has evolved to D.E.N. Education Grammar Home. It's now a grammar reference site with alphabetical listing of rules of grammar on dozens of topics. No exercises that I could see, but a useful and comprehensive reference, attractively laid out: http://www.edunet.com/english/grammar/toc.html(viewed March 2001)
• Find grammar exercises at Dave Sperling's http://www.eslcafe.com/
• David Tillyer's Grammar When You Need It is at http://www.geocities.com/athens/olympus/7583 provides a comprehensive set of grammar explanations and a meagre but growing body of exercises. The outline is there and is being filled in, showing what an ambitious project it is. Activities are grouped around: "Red This list contains basic level grammar explanations and exercises. If you're just beginning to learn English, this is the place for you. If you have more experience with English, you might find this area useful as a brush up! Green This is for people who have been learning English for a while. The grammar is a little more challenging and the explanations are more detailed. Black These are generally more challenging and suited for people who are studying engineering, computer science, and more technical topics" You can also get there by hitting http://www.geocities.com/gwyni_99/(viewed March 2001)
• Ruth Vilmi has moved to a blog format and posted WriteIt Resources: Grammar Help here: http://www.writeit.fi/ruth/writeit-resources-grammar/ (viewed January 2008)
• John Willetts has been experimenting with A.V. grammar on-line. Take a look at Verb Explorer on his home page: http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~efl

Grammar Links organized alphabetically by contributing institution

• BBC Learning English website. http://bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/
  • For Grammar, the link is http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/grammar/index.shtml
• British Council: http://britcoun.org/ (temporarily overloaded per LinkSleuth report Jan 6, 2008)
• "The Chemnitz InternetGrammar is a hypertext learning environment set up to allow exploration of topics of English Grammar troublesome for German learners. The site is meant to provide rules and explanations, exercises and authentic examples from the Chemnitz Translation Corpus, linked together so that you can work through the different topics in the way that best suits you. The project aims "to induce guiding principles for the development of interactive, learner-specific grammar programs for the internet and to produce a program based on aspects of English grammar which applies these principles." Find the project at the site for Learner Behaviour on the Internet, Chemnitz University of Technology, The REAL Centre, English Language and Linguistics (free password must be obtained prior to access; this is to allow you to bookmark pages and them to track how people are using the site) http://www.tu-chemnitz.de/InternetGrammar or http://www.tu-chemnitz.de/phil/InternetGrammar(the site was found in April 2001 to be still up but with many links still under construction; rechecked in Jan 2008, did not log on, but found it works in IE but not in Firefox.)
• Language Dynamics's Englishpage.com - Free online English lessons & ESL / EFL resources http://www.englishpage.com/index.html (viewed Jan 2008)
• LinguaCenter's Grammar Safari applies a "natural approach" to the study of grammar, plus instruction on using the web and links to ESL resources there. From the Rationale section: "The World Wide Web (WWW) is an excellent place to begin experiencing English as it occurs in its natural surroundings--not only are there millions of English texts readily available, but also most of them can be electronically searched for those elusive yet fascinating English grammar structures. The "grammar safari" activities suggested here are just that, suggestions for "hunting" and "collecting" EXAMPLES of specific words as they are used in documents accessible to anyone on the WWW -- a vast, ever-growing, always up-to-date "corpus" of language ranging over an inexhaustible range of topics, geographic areas, and users." http://www.iei.uiuc.edu/student_grammarsafari.html (re-discovered Jan 4, 2008, with appreciation for help of Dennis Oliver)
• Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English http://www-writing.berkeley.edu/TESL-EJ/ej15/r14.html
• Mirriam Webster Guide to Grammar and Writing site http://webster.commnet.edu/grammar/index.htm; PowerPoint presentations created by ELT teachers
• Purdue Owl, http://owl.english.purdue.edu; Grammar: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/grammar
• University College, London: The Internet Grammar of English (index) http://www.ucl.ac.uk/internet-grammar/index/index.htm , thanks to Dennis Oliver Jan 2008
• 330 Grammar Topics (University of Victoria, Canada) http://web2.uvcs.uvic.ca/elc/studyzone/330/grammar/index.htm, thanks to Dennis Oliver Jan 2008

Other Grammar Resources

• English Practice, http://www.englishpractice.com/
• An appealing and thought-provoking picture which you can use to elicit prepositions of place and facial features can be found at: http://www.geocities.com/Vienna/2752/9ppl.html (viewed March 2001)
• See a list of "all" irregular verbs in English, with their translations in Spanish, at http://www.lingolex.com/simplepast/allverbs.htm#up (viewed March 2001)
• The Phrasal Verbs Drinks Dispenser at http://www.stuff.co.uk/phrasal2.htm serves up a cocktail of verbs and particles in a mixture of topics. Sourced from the Dictionary of Phrasal Verbs from CUP You need the free shockwave player installed on your computer. (correct URL provided by Dennis Oliver, Jan 4, 2008)
• The "English Workbook" at http://www.aimrun.com
• http://www.englishlearner.com/tests/test.html
• http://www.ucl.ac.uk/internet-grammar/home.htm
• ESL Blues: http://ww2.college-em.qc.ca/prof/epritchard/
• Dot Mackenzie suggests (Jan 2008 - bad links removed, others moved into main list; no time to further categorize just now, but enjoy .)
  • http://www.churchillhouse.com/english/
  • http://www.edufind.com/english/grammar/toc.cfm
  • http://www.edunet.com/
  • http://www.english-forum.com/interactive/
  • http://www.english-zone.com/
  • http://eslgames.com/teachingsongs/edutainment1/
  • http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Writing/
  • http://www.monash.edu.au/
• Bee adds
  • Hong Kong: http://www.edict.com.hk/vlc/
  • http://english-zone.com/index.php?ID=1
• Sophie recommends
  • http://www.roadtogrammar.com
  • http://international.ouc.bc.ca/chalkntalk/

Grammar Checkers

See the article by Yu Hong Wei & Davies at: http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/GrahamDavies1/euro96b.htm which also appears in: Yu Hong Wei and Davies G. (1997) "Do grammar checkers work?". In Kohn J., Rüschoff B. and Wolff D. (eds.) New horizons in CALL: proceedings of EUROCALL 96, Szombathely, Hungary: Dániel Berzsenyi College. Posted 1 Mar 2000, by Graham Davies, to EUROCALL-Members (used here with his permission Mar 30, 2001):

See also:

• Jacobs G. and Rodgers C. (1999) "Treacherous allies: foreign language grammar checkers", CALICO Journal 16, 4: 509-530.
• Tschichold C. (1999) "Intelligent grammar checking for CALL". In Schulze M., Hamel M-J. and Thompson (eds.) Language Processing in CALL, Special Issue of ReCALL, Hull: CTICML, University of Hull. (This one may be online; I'll try and find it - GVS)

Shockwave grammar playgrounds

Jim Duber maintains an interesting shocked! and flashed! site called Cutting Edge CALL / Chorus at http://www-writing.berkeley.edu/chorus/call/cuttingedge.html. In his words, "On this page, I have included demo activities which are the result of my experiments with different ways of using new technologies to deliver Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) modules via the web. Most of these demos feature lessons and activities for students of English as a Second Language (ESL), or English as a Foreign Language (EFL) delivered using Macromedia's Shockwave for Director technology." (viewed March 2001)

Here are some of the offerings, descriptions taken directly from the page just cited:

• I created the "TOEFL® Preparation Quiz" for use in a UC Berkeley Summer Session course I recently taught. Making the best use of Shockwave Flash, it loads very quickly and offers a high level of interactivity with short answer essay type questions--students can have a copy of their results sent to their teachers for additional feedback.
• I created "Who Came?" using many of the ActionScript features of Shockwave Flash. Designed to stream even over a slow 28K modem connection, this exercise offers intensive practice of minimal pairs. Results are sent by email after "Tries" number ten and twenty.
• My Apartment: The Game makes use of Apple's QuickTime VR technology together with RealAudio's streaming sound and JavaScript technology which place the student in a highly immersive and realistic three-dimensional environment.
• Learn the ASL Alphabet!

John Allan and colleagues (teslca-l, 20 May 1999) have been experimenting with different formats for delivering Flash and Shockwave ESL content on the Web. They have set up two grammar playgrounds on the web at:

• http://www.clta.on.ca/hillsofmexico/shocked/homshocked01.htm with exercises including
• http://www.clta.on.ca/hillsofmexico/flash/homflash01.htm

These sites no longer active at the url's indicated; I'm looking for them elsewhere. If you happen to know where they are, don't keep it to yourself ...

• Lingua Systems CALL and ELT resources at http://linguasy.com/ have not been available for some time. The site now carries the message: "This site is under construction for relaunch in mid-2001 from LinguaSy with the LS Power Concordancer as well as other linguistic tools & services" (viewed March 2001)