English Learning and Teaching Resources
Words
Words are the building blocks of the English language. This section includes articles and handouts about the origins of words, as well as how to use common reference materials such as dictionaries and thesauruses. (Articles about topics such as spelling and forming plurals are in the "Mechanics" section below.)
Resources coming soon.
Grammar
Grammar is a set of rules and guidelines describing how to put words together to create sentences that have meaning. While there are many forms of English grammar, most of the articles and handouts here concern themselves with what is typically called "Standard English."
Resources coming soon.
Writing
The resources above are about words and sentences. While words and sentences both have meaning, paragraphs are where ideas are born and live. Therefore, the following resources are about paragraph-level concerns: using the tools available to writers to construct paragraphs that convey ideas from the writer's mind to the reader's mind, and to avoid having ideas die untimely and ugly deaths.Mechanics
Mechanics includes capitalization, spelling and hyphenation, punctuation, italics, abbreviations and acronyms, and manuscript format. (There is no set definition for mechanics, so other guides may include items not listed here and may exclude some items I've mentioned.)
Resources coming soon.
Usage
Also called "diction," usage is about using the proper word. Usage is more than the difference between "who" and "whom" or between "continual" and "continuous" however; it is about helping your audience to understand your meaning by making good word choices.
Resources coming soon.
Style
Closely related to usage is style: the choices a writer makes about metaphors, sentence length and structure, unity and parallelism, and consistency, among other things.
Resources coming soon.
Literature
This section includes resources for studying and teaching poetry, short fiction, novels, drama, nonfiction, and speeches.
Resources coming soon.
