Somehow, I managed to teach ESL for over 10 years before I learned what this is. The expression “is supposed to” is called a semi-auxiliary verb. In the sentence in the title, “study” is the main verb.
The expressions below are all called semi-auxiliary verbs. They are followed by the main verb.
During the week of Jan. 15-19, 2018, each day, I was interviewed online at LINCS about teaching grammar.
The topics were:
Jan. 15: Inductive teaching
Jan. 16: Importance of grammar terminology
Jan. 17: Ear-learners
Jan. 18: Leading students to finding grammar mistakes
Jan. 19: The connection between reading and learning grammar
Each day, I mentioned handout exercises related to that days topic, and I made these available in this posting below.
To see the handouts and read more information about the topics, please read below.
Continue reading
My students are always quite surprised when I tell them this true story about subordination*. Several years ago, I taught Academic ESL at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point (UWSP). I had discussions with the chair of the English Dept. about how they determine which students (American and International) are qualified to take English 101 Composition. Not surprisingly, he said all new students write a placement essay. But this is the surprising part: the readers/evaluators do NOT consider the idea-development, nor the paragraph organization, nor the grammar. Instead they looked for only one aspect: whether or not the writer could use subordination (dependent and independent clauses) correctly. Their research found that that one aspect was the most reliable predictor about which students would be successful in English Comp.
(This posting includes a handout which you are welcome to use with your students.) *
This posting is discussed on my YouTube video: Why is this comma here?
During a teacher-training course that I was teaching for American college students who wanted to teach ESL, we were discussing where to put commas. Several of the students said that they decide according to their breath. As they are re-reading something that they had written, if they stop to take a breath, that’s where they put a comma. Wow!
Common Sense Teaching ESL 