Cátedra Investigación e Innovación para la Enseñanza del Inglés

Stephen Krashen's Theory of Second Language Acquisitio

Linguistic Fundamentals

HyperGrammar: HyperGrammar is an electronic grammar course at the University of Ottawa’s Writing Center and it is available for use free of charge. It is still under construction, so there are sections that might be incomplete. In spite of that, it is a quite useful grammar and writing tool for ESL students.

University of Kansas Writing Center: Here you will find plenty of information on writing strategies. The Center provides students with several guides for writing and many other links to online writing resources.

Purdue Online Writing Lab: The Online Writing Lab (OWL) at Purdue University is a free service. Anyone can access the site and you can even submit brief questions to OWL real tutors. The site is quite complete as to the number of writing resources and instructional materials it provides. There you can find information on how to write a memo, a business letter, abstracts, resumes; grammar and mechanics, and many other important aspects for academic writing, including the different formatting and style guides available.

Writing Labs & Writing Centers on the Web: This is an exhaustive list of the writing centers online. Most of these centers are projects of American Universities and Colleges’ English Departments. Some of them only provide students with a list of online resources; while others include free handouts, summaries and practices on the topic for everyone to access.

Improving Text Flow in ESL Learner Compositions: “In this article, we provide a way to focus on the progression of information through thematic patterning (Danes, 1974) in the writing classroom. We apply this as a tool to help in the rewriting of a student text, and suggest how it might be of practical use in the ESL classroom.”

Tips for ESL Students on Reviewing and Improving Written Work: “This article covers five practical tips for students to self-review, revise and improve the pre-submission standard of work written in English.”

Writing English: This site provides details on the uses of specific punctuation marks such as the comma, period, exclamation mark, question mark, oblique, semicolon, colon, hyphen, dash, parentheses, brackets, and the apostrophe. The explanations might be too short but the examples given are quite illustrative.

Common Errors in English Language: Paul Brians, a well-known English Professor at Washington State University, prepared this site. He compiled an exhaustive list of the errors commonly made by American English native speakers. You can go through it, and read the explanations for each of the entries. There are also supplementary pages you do not want to miss, and links to other quite good resources worthy to visit.

Merriam Webster Online Dictionary: Although the site offers a series of premium services you have to pay for, there are three free basic services in particular that will definitely be your best friends when writing a paper in English: the English dictionary, the Thesaurus, and the Spanish-English dictionary. You just have to follow an easy three-step process (select a reference, enter a word or a phrase, and click search). There is also a new free feature: a Medical Dictionary (you never know…)

Purdue University On-Line Writing Lab: Brought to you by the Purdue University Writing Lab, this is probably one of the best writing resources available on the Web.

Language Learning Strategies Instruction and Language Use Applied to Foreign Language Reading and Writing: A Simplified "Menu" Approach

This article outlines “one possible way of addressing language learning strategies instruction and language use through what I have called a ´Menu Approach´”: An excellent dictionary, thesaurus, reference, and translator with tools to install in your computer.  You can hear the pronunciation of the word and see the translation into the IPA phonetic alphabet.

GrammarBook.com Your ·# 1 Source for Grammar and Punctuation: Videos about the use of pronouns, verbs, commas, prepositions, apostrophes, hyphens, capitalization and others.

Write Site: APA. Critical thinking, reading and writing, editing, invention, pronouns, research process, revising, structure and organization, verb tenses, the writing occasion, the writing process.

Guide to Writing Basic Essays: Decide on your topic. Prepare an outline. Write your thesis statement. Write the body. Write the introduction. Write the conclusion.