ESL003: Upper-Intermediate English as a Second Language

How strong is your English vocabulary? Complete this activity to measure your vocabulary size.

Let's start by first reviewing the three grammatical features that affect the correct match between parts of sentences. Next, we will learn about specific subject-verb agreement rules in more detail to understand how to correctly match them in sentences.

Now that we have reviewed grammatical number, person, and case, let's look at subject-verb agreement in more detail to see how they can always be matched in our sentences.

After reviewing subject-verb agreement rules, let's take a look at pronoun-antecedent agreement in more detail to see how they can always be matched in our sentences.

These activities give you the opportunity to find out how well you understand how to ensure agreement between subjects and their predicates, as well as pronouns and their antecedents. If you have a difficult time forming and using verbs in the present, you may review and then try these practice activities again.

For this discussion, you will choose a couple of sentences from the Present Tense Discussion in Unit 1 of the ESL002 course and practice identifying any agreement used in that sentence.

Let's start by first reviewing the role verbs playing sentences. Next, we will look at how maintaining verb tense improves sentence clarity.

After reviewing the role of main, or lexical, verbs in sentences and understanding the importance of tense consistency, let's look at improving sentence clarity by avoiding unnecessary tense shifts in our sentences.

These activities  give you the opportunity to find out how well you can maintain tense consistency in sentences and paragraphs. If you have a difficult time identifying and correcting unnecessary tense shifts, you may review and then try these practice activities again.

For this discussion, tell a short family story or something that happened to you. As you write and proofread, make sure all your verbs are correct, and the tenses are consistent.

Watch these videos and complete the practice activities to review what you learned about sentence agreement.

In ESL001 and ESL002, we learned about and practiced active reading strategies to help you identify different types of text as well as find the main idea and details. This unit in ESL003 will show you how to "read between the lines" or make inferences about what you're reading. This strategy helps you pull together what the writer is telling you to come to a conclusion about the text you're reading.

In ESL002, we learned about being thoughtful readers. In this unit, we continue to look at this by focusing on the ability to recognize facts and opinions in a reading passage.

Good readers string together clues from the text and their own background knowledge or experience to make inferences. This lesson helps you as a reader understand inferences and make your own!

The activities will allow you to see how well you understand making inferences and distinguishing facts and opinions. 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.

Complete this series of activities, which involve reading short articles and answering the questions that follow.

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

Now that we understand the difference between specific and general vocabulary, let's put this knowledge into practice.

Go through the video presentations, which provide a review of the vocabulary skills you have learned about in this unit.

These materials include information about writing basic essays in English. After you read the explanations and watch the videos to learn about opinion paragraphs, you will be able to test your understanding by completing practice activities.

While most essays basically have the same structure, they can be different according to the writer's purpose. Many of your future academic and workplace writing assignments will be expository – explaining your ideas or the significance of a concept or action.

Now that we have a better understanding of the relationships between essay structure, purpose, organization, and word choice, let's put it all together in practice.

So, how should you get started? In ESL001 and ESL002, you learned about the writing process, so approaching your writing task is all about following those steps. Let's review together with a sample expository essay on the topic of "fads".

Watch these videos, which give a basic overview of expository writing, essay structure, and writing strategies you learned about in this unit.