Korean Job Discussion Forums

[fancypants]

i am looking for resources that lay out what sequence grammatical structures should be introduced to the student in, which steps are the "biggies" for the student (big leaps), etc.

any ideas?

[Jamin]

I have been teaching ESL for about 11 years now. I think the biggest mistake we make is to start with the "to be verb". The grammatical structures which it most often collocate with are quite complex. For example:
My name is Joe.

This sentence requires the students to understand possessive pronouns, the concept of singular and plural, as well as articles. The student must also be constantly aware of which form of the "to be verb" to use. It also imposes on the students a framework that differs from the standard subject-verb-object organization found in most grammatical sequences.

I generally start with the simple past. I do this because a large majority of conversation is set in the past tense. Also, a simple past sentence follows the standard subject-verb-sequence we usually associate with English. Basically, I try to teach the least complex grammatical sequences first.