ESL002: Intermediate English as a Second Language

Read the story and answer the questions to assess how well you understand what you read in English. You can try this activity again after you have completed this course to see if your comprehension has improved.

Find out if you know the parts of speech in the English language that you will need for this course and a lifetime of learning!

Let's start by first reviewing the three features of verbs to know their definition and examples. Next, we will learn about two specific tenses in more detail to understand how to form and use them correctly to build sentences.

The activities below allow you to find out how well you understand verb features. If you have a difficult time identifying a verb's tense, aspect, or mood, you may return to review the information above and then try these practice activities again.

Now that we know how to form the simple present tense and present continuous tense in the affirmative, negative, and interrogative, let's look at how they are different from each other when using them in sentences.

Let's start by reviewing how to form the simple present tense and the present continuous tense in Standard English. Next, we will look at when to use each to correctly express our thoughts in a sentence.

These activities give you the opportunity to find out how well you understand how to form and use the present simple and continuous tenses. If you have a difficult time forming and using verbs in the present, you may return to review the information above and then try these practice activities again.

Let's continue by reviewing how to form the simple past tense and the past continuous tense in Standard English. Next, we will look at when to use each to correctly express our thoughts in a sentence.

Now that we know how to form the simple past tense and past continuous tense in the affirmative, negative, and interrogative, let's look at how they are different from each other when using them in sentences.

The activities below allow you to find out how well you understand how to form and use the simple past tense and past continuous tense. If you have difficulty forming and using verbs in the past, you may return to review the information above and then try these practice activities again.

Watch these videos and complete the practice activity to review what you learned about forming and using aspects of the present and past tenses.

Active reading strategies will help you understand and remember what you read more successfully. This unit in ESL002 will review these strategies and allow you to practice them again on different types of texts.

In ESL001, we also learned about the features and structures of nonfiction texts. In this unit, we continue to look at this by focusing on the features of narrative texts.

The activities will allow you to see how well you understand active reading skills and the features of narrative texts. If you have a difficult time identifying reading strategies and narrative elements, you may return to review the information in the Let's Study section and then try these practice activities again.

Read this narrative and answer the questions that follow.

Watch these videos, which review the reading skills you learned in this unit.

Reading a lot in English and collecting the new words you find will help you increase your vocabulary. This reading will review some vocabulary strategies to help you use the new words you learn.

In ESL001, we also learned about using a dictionary to look up the meaning of new words we collect while reading or listening in English. It's also important to keep in mind that words often have more than one meaning. Therefore, when learning new words, you should try to match the meaning of the new word to the context it was used in when you heard or read it.

Now that we remember how to use a dictionary and suffixes to improve vocabulary skills, let's put this knowledge into practice.

To complete this activity, you'll review three links related to writing an email message and complete three tasks that require vocabulary and sentence building. These tasks will help you build a stronger vocabulary by showing you how a thesaurus and suffixes can help you use new words.

Go through the video presentation, which reviews the vocabulary skills you learned in this unit.

For college students, reading and writing are constant activities. We started this course by looking at basic tenses used to explain our thoughts in Standard English. When we choose present or past to write our sentences in English, we communicate a specific meaning. When writing paragraphs and essays, we carefully choose the tense to match the purpose and meaning of our writing.

Now that we know more about paragraphs, let's take a closer look at a specific type of paragraph and how we can write one.

Now that we remember a story's elements and know the parts of a paragraph, let's put it all together in practice.

The story of Luna and Violeta that you read earlier uses past tense and phrases about time to tell the reader when things occur. It is clear to the reader from the story's beginning that it is not taking place today. You can use these same tools to write about your past. Read this presentation and complete the activity to write five sentences about what you did last week. Don't worry about errors yet. You'll review your sentences and make corrections later. Instead of using the provided box to write your sentences, make sure you have your sentences written or saved somewhere else so you can come back to them later.

Any time you write something for school or work, you need to take time to check it for errors. Read this article on consistent verb tense and word forms. Proofreading can be hard, so many people find it helpful to use checklists and go one step at a time. You'll get some practice with this next.

You wrote five sentences about things you did last week using the past tense skills from Unit 1, adjectives and adverbs from Unit 3, and timelines from earlier in Unit 4. Good work! The next step is to check your work and edit it if needed. Use the checklist below to review each sentence for errors. Correct any errors you find. The next step will be to share your work. Be sure to print or download the checklist to save it for future use.

Watch these videos, which give a basic overview of the writing strategies you learned about in this unit.