English for Academic Purposes (EAP)
(English as a Second Language (ESL))
Understanding grammar
Download one of our useful study pamphlets online:
The use of articles |
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Subject verb agreement |
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Academic style |
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Cohesion in academic writing |
These pamphlets are also available in hard copy from ASU.
Useful links
On this page:
- grammar and writing
- grammar quizzes online
- learner dictionaries
- vocabulary
- punctuation
- pronunciation and listening
Grammar and writing
Excellent resources for ESL students from Purdue University Online Learning Centre including resource pages, handouts, and interactive exercises.
The Virtual Language Centre at Hong Kong Polytech University is an excellent site for clear explanation of grammar points with accompanying exercises. The Academic Writer, a detailed, nine stage writing course designed to help ESL students write and edit academic papers, is a valuable resource and covers the following areas: writing an introduction, paragraph writing, writing an argument, tone, style, using evidence and writing conclusions.
Exercise Central is a collection of editing exercises available online that provide practice for mastering the skills of editing grammar, style, punctuation, and mechanics.
The Internet TESL Journal site contains activities, in the form of quizzes, exercise and puzzles for ESL students.
Darling's Guide to Good Grammar
A comprehensive guide to all aspects of grammar and syntax.
The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation.
An easy-to-use self guide to find answers to your questions concerning grammar.
This site by Gareth Jones contains useful information and examples on tenses.
Daily Grammar. A comprehensive site with archived lessons on all aspects of grammar and punctuation
Learners Dictionaries
Learner's dictionaries give a lot more information about words than their definitions. Most entries show sample sentences to demonstrate the context of a word.
Cambridge On-Line Learner's Dictionary:
This site will give you some sample sentences for each word entry.
Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary:
Some sample sentences are given for entries plus at the end of each entry a “patterns and collocations” section is included.
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
This dictionary has pictures for selected entries.
MapMyWord Dictionary
This innovative dictionary allows you to see a selected word and how it relates to other words in its “family” and offers a number of options for you to find out more information.
Online Thesaurus
A thesaurus lists possible synonym/s (words with a similar meaning) and antonym/s (words with an opposite meaning).
Grammar quizzes online
Here are a number of simple online quizzes you can use to improve your grammar:
Capital Community College FoundationA comprehensive site covering higher level writing skills including sentence structure, phrases and clauses, style and punctuation as well as grammar.
The Internet TESL Journal.A selection of quizzes on such topics as error correction, word choice and form, articles, prepositions and sentence structure.
English Grammar ConnectionQuizzes on grammar skills and writing mechanics at intermediate and advanced (general and ESL) levels.
Grammar quizzes include modals, prepositions and tenses.
Graded (easy to difficult) tests with grammar explanations.
Using English
This site covers grammar, usage and vocabulary grouped into levels
Vocabulary
A compilation of database-derived lists of key vocabulary, including the Academic Word List and University Word List, with diagnostic and developmental exercises. Like the Virtual Language Centre at Hong Kong Polytech University, The Compleat Lexical Tutor has a concordancer (in fact, more than one) which you can use to see how particular words and phrases are used in actual writing (or speaking). (To get some idea of what a concordancer is and how it is used, read the site review linked to at the top of the page.) - And, if you're wondering, "compleat" is an old-fashioned spelling of "complete"; its use here refers to the title of a famous 17th century book about fishing, The Compleat Angler.
The University Vocabulary Trainer from the University of Hong Kong has been specially designed to help you learn the key words for more effective university study. Includes definitions, examples of usage and guidelines for punctuation.
Punctuation
Sentence Punctuation patterns from Purdue Writing Lab. Click for specific handouts on apostrophes, commas, semicolons, hyphens and other punctuation.
Lessons 336-340 on the Daily Grammar site deal extensively with all aspects of punctuation.
Pronunciation and Listening
This excellent interactive site from Hong Kong Polytechnic University features real audio streaming with sound, integrated with text and vocabulary.
BBC Learning English
A BBC service for English learners.
You may need to download additional software to access the following site:
Randall's ESL Cyber Listening Lab, includes conversation games and graded listening quizzes. This site includes programs such as The Vowel Machine to help you to recognize English vowel sounds. You will see words in ordinary spelling or in phonetic transcription. Your task is to choose the word you hear.