Category Archives: Grammar & ESL

Writing Mistakes I See Too Often

By on July 21st, 2011

Typos are a way of life and even reviewing your own work can be tricky since you tend to read what you meant to say rather than what you actually said. Then, there is an entirely different kind of writing …

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Tricky Words: Past, Passed, Except and Accept

By on June 23rd, 2011

In the last week, two tricky word patterns have made it to my attention. This is particularly interesting since I’m not in the classroom over the summer, where I usually am assaulted by word problems. Here are my most recent …

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Editing: You’re the Professional

By on February 18th, 2011

The following is a guest post from CJ Arlotta. Every word is chosen carefully; every sentence is structured for perfection. Paragraphs are crossed out, and pages are destroyed; commas are added and omitted. Careless spelling errors are picked up by …

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Organization in Writing: A Lost Art

By on December 18th, 2010

Remember the days of the five-paragraph essay? We started in elementary school learning about topic sentences and then main ideas. We threw in some supporting details, restated that topic statement and rounded that paper out. It was clean, it was …

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Help! I Is Missing Again!

By on December 4th, 2010

At lunch the other day, a group of English teachers were laughing about some of the things we find funny in student papers. Note that we weren’t laughing at students, but at how often we see the same mistakes, and …

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