Peer Review

ESL for Beginning Students: The Way You Like It: Basic Beginning Grammar/Writing (Part One of Two)

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Reviewed:: Aug 26, 2019 by Teacher Education

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Ratings

Overall Rating:

Content Quality:

Effectiveness:

Ease of Use:

Overview:

Book 1. Beginning grammar book in a 5-level series for ESL students. This is the first of the two books for beginners, and it is the first of 5 levels of Academic ESL Grammar. These resources were created by Don Bissonnette at South Seattle College, who taught ESL for 45 years. He dedicates these extensive resources to students and teachers and hopes that the materials make acquiring English easier for all who use them.

Type of Material:

Open (Access) Textbook allows for remixing under CC #4

This is an English grammar reference at elementary level.

Recommended Uses:

The book will be useful for anyone who wants to teach, learn or practice English basics, especially those with limited funds because the book is free to use.

This book can be utilized as a self-study reference. Teachers of English can refer to some of its exercises in their classes as well.

Technical Requirements:

Book 1 is available for download from the OER Commons website in .doc format, as well as other formats including SCORM with an OER Commons registration.

Identify Major Learning Goals:

The goal of the author is to provide materials that "make acquiring English easier for all who use them." He provides the book under Creative Commons License 4 which means you can re-use, re-work and re-distribute his work by attributing him, Donald Bissonnette; however, his work cannot be sold for commercial use. The learning goal is stated by the author as “Written English grammar and vocabulary.”

Target Student Population:

Any person of any educational level who has reading skills and wants to learn English grammar could benefit from this book.

The target population of this particular book is basic beginners acquiring English skills, however, other books targeting high beginners and low and high intermediate learners are also available.

Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:

Prerequisite knowledge of some English would be necessary for a student using the book on their own, however, teachers could incorporate the book skills into their lesson plans for learners of any level of ability.

Content Quality

Rating:

Strengths:

Each Chapter described in the Table of Contents includes a Lesson with many examples, and several practice quizzes are provided for each lesson allowing for mastery of the topics. An answer key for each quiz is included in the materials.

The following basic beginner topics for learning English are covered the chapter lessons: Irregular Verbs; The Verb To Be Helping; Verbs Parts of an English Sentences Parts of Speech; Articles; Nouns; Spelling Rules for Nouns and Verbs; Pronouns ;Prepositions; Parts of Speech Exercises; Conjunctions; Adjective and Adverbs of Manner; Present Continuous Tense; Simple Present Tense; Adverbs of Frequency; Simple Past Tense; Past Continuous Tense; Capitalization Rules; Writing Passages

Concerns:

The fashion of displaying the information is rather confusing, so ELLs are advised to refer to a teacher or instructor for clarification. For example,

- Negative of the Present progressive (Continuous) Tense is introduced on Page (66), then the negative of the Simple Present Tense is introduced on Page (82). Definitely, this is illogical fashion of explaining the sequence of tenses in English grammar.

- “Neither---Nor” Negative Form, related to the English Compound Sentences, is introduced on Page (50). On the other hand, the negative of the Simple Present Tense and the Simple Past Tense in English Simple Sentences are introduced on Page (102). The English Simple Sentences, with their different forms and cases, should be introduced before the English Compound ones.

Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool

Rating:

Strengths:

Although the specific learning objectives are not provided, they are in inherent in the lessons. For example for the first lesson on irregular verbs, the expected outcome is that a student will be able to differentiate between regular and irregular verbs, and be able to change the form of irregular verbs to past tense and past participle forms, as confirmed by the tasks in the practice quiz.

The materials could be used in a variety of ways including direct instruction, group work or assigned as homework or extended learning. They could also be easily incorporated into existing lesson plans.

Registered OER Commons users have the ability to Remix the content on the site.

The exercises and the drills have answers by the end of the book. So the ELLs users do not have to consult the answers with teachers / instructors.

Concerns:

A listing of learning objectives and/or outcomes is generally expected in educational works and would enhance the usefulness of this book.

Some content is not needed to be included in this book. Here are examples:

-On page (99), “seldom” is old-fashioned adverb of frequency.

-The Present Perfect Tense is not advised to be taught to beginners. Furthermore, we must bear in mind that this tense is gradually being replaced by Simple Past Tense.

-On page (74), the there is a wrong linguistic term used in the title. This title must be :” How to Make Interrogative Sentence”, and not “ How to Make Information Sentence.”

-The interrogative pronoun, whom, can be introduced for advanced level learners, but not for beginners level learners. We have to take into consideration that “whom” gradually discontinues to be used.

Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty

Rating:

Strengths:

The book is available in various formats such epub, PDF, Google Doc, and Word Doc format as well as a SCORM package so the user has a variety of options for using the material depending upon tools they have access to such as a learning management system. At minimum, materials could be printed and students could use a pencil to take the practice quizzes and even grade their own work if the teacher provided the answer key. On the other end of the spectrum, the SCORM package would allow for import of materials so that students could take the quizzes digitally and get automatic feedback. The Remix tool available to registered users is easy to use.

The book can be accessed as a Word Document or Google Drive Word. Therefore, there will be no problem for ELLs of accessing this book offline if they do not need to have an internet connection

Concerns:

It is noteworthy that although the Word Doc is available to everyone without logging in, use of the other methods for download, share and export are available only after registration at the OER Commons site.

The Teaching Bundle that was available as an option for downloading as a zip file did not contain anything beyond the book itself in Word Doc format.

Other Issues and Comments:

The material is not ADA compliant. For example headings are not used and underlining is used excessively.

Books for the other four levels are available at the OER Commons website.

All the quizzes and the exercises are made up in the form of direct drills where the ELLs can easily apply the grammatical rules effortlessly. These exercises could have included diverse communicative exercises like practical conversations, gap texts, etc....

Creative Commons: