Job Discussion Forums

mikial · Joined: 11 Oct 2003 Posts: 8 Location: Florida

Does anyone know of good quizzes to test my knowledge of English grammar? According to the short quiz here, I need to do a lot more studying before thinking about teaching esl.
What do you guys think?

shmooj · Joined: 11 Sep 2003 Posts: 1758 Location: Seoul, ROK

Can't help you in the testing department, but I'd suggest you search this forum for the word "grammar" and particularly the Newbie forum. We've had chats in the past about how to brush up our awareness of our own language so you will probably find some good advice there.

Are you talking English as a Second Language (i.e. teaching to users ina country where English is the language) or English as a Foreign Language (i.e. in a country like Japan)?

If it is really EFL then I would recommend that, when you know where you'll be going, you try to find out some basics about the language of the people you will be teaching. That way, you can spot areas which will be tough.

For example prepositions like in, on, at etc come before nouns in English. In Japanese, they come after the noun. This can of course cause problems with word order for Japanese learners of English. This is called language transfer where you speak your second language (L2) in terms of your first language (L1).

Hope that helps a bit...

voodoochild · Joined: 04 Apr 2003 Posts: 80

www.englishlang.co.uk go to online test

Celeste · Posted: Thu Dec 11, 2003 7:18 am Post subject:

http://grammar.englishclub.com/index.html

http://a4esl.org/q/h/grammar.html

THese are a couple of sites that I use with the Jr. high school teachers that I train.

Mister Ed · Joined: 13 Oct 2003 Posts: 32

There's an interactive test for TOEIC [Test Of English for International Communication] which is quite strong on applied grammar. There are probably others; just use TOEIC as a search term.
This one's www.faceweb.okanagan.bc.ca/toeic/

mikial · Joined: 11 Oct 2003 Posts: 8 Location: Florida

Okay, seems like I know more than I thought Smile

. That one quiz made me worry for a second.
Thanks for the links everybody.

guru · Joined: 27 Jan 2003 Posts: 156 Location: Indonesia

If you are professional and keen then your grammar knowledge isn't an issue. Most ESL teachers learn grammar as they teach. I didn't know anything about tense: simple present or past tense etc. I didn't know what a preposition or conjunction was. I started off at a language school and now I'm in a quite good job and my grammar knowlege is very good. all because I was keen on learning. I often said that whilst in Indonesia i was learning 2 languages Indonesian and English!