Two Useful Handouts

Useful Tools for ESL Students (Duke): Useful links (including some from this webpage), arranged as a printable handout.

Listening and Conversational Skills (Duke): Strengthen your listening and conversational skills by perusing the websites selected for this handout.

Writing for American

Academic Audiences

U.S. Academic Writing: Considerations for Non-Native Speakers (Duke): This Powerpoint slide show outlines organizational and stylistic conventions within U.S. academic writing.

Writing in North American Higher Education (Purdue): Conventions of "academic writing" differ from culture to culture. Learn about expectations of American academic audiences from this Purdue website.

Cultural Perspectives on Plagiarism (Washington State): Conventions of what constitutes plagiarism also differ from culture to culture. Read this site for an appreciation of some of those differences.

Using Appropriate Language (Purdue): Certain kinds of writing and language use are appropriate in some contexts but not others. This website helps sort out what writing styles are appropriate for different situations.

Grammar Help

Guide to Grammar and Writing (Capital Community College): A Writing Studio favorite, this website offers grammar and usage advice from A ("A, An, The") to Z ("Zero articles"), with links to quizzes that test your grammar knowledge and provide explanations for answers.

ESL Common Errors Workbook (Penguin): This Penguin Handbook offers tutorials and interactive practice for avoiding common ESL errors.

Articles (UNC): Studies show that articles are among the hardest grammatical units to learn in English. In some contexts, readers might be willing to "read past" article errors; in other contexts, they might not. To strengthen your understanding of article usage, check out this detailed method from UNC's Writing Center.

Help Center at Dave's ESL Café: Ask ESL questions online and receive answers from ESL tutors, courtesy of Dave's ESL Café.

Dictionaries

Learner's Dictionaries: Monolingual learners' dictionaries assist learners of a foreign language by providing more detailed information about definitions, usage, collocations, grammar, synonyms, countability, etc., than one can find in a bilingual dictionary or a dictionary designed for native speakers. Useful online learners' dictionaries include the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary and the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English Online.

Dictionary of English Idioms: Idioms are expressions that have a meaning based on common usage rather than on the meanings of the individual words. Use this dictionary of English idioms to make sense of phrases like "Cat got your tongue?" and "Mind your own beeswax."

Dictionary of English Phrasal Verbs: Phrasal verbs are idiomatic expressions that combine a verb with a preposition (e.g. sign away, sign for, sign in, sign into, sign off, sign on, sign on with, sign out, sign out of, sign up, sign with). Consult this dictionary to understand differences in meanings, to find the right adjective to use with a verb, or just to browse phrasal verbs.

Visual Dictionary: Sometimes a picture helps you make sense of a word better than a written explanation can.

Vocabulary:

The Academic Word List

The Academic Word List (Victoria University of Wellington): Averil Coxhead developed the Academic Word List, comprised of 570 word families chosen for their frequency in an academic corpus. Click on the site's links to explore the headwords and sublists.

Vocabulary Exercises for the Academic Word List (University of Victoria): Gerry Luton of the University of Victoria created these vocabulary exercises for the Academic Word List (AWL).

Additional Links

Can't find what you're looking for here? The UNC Writing Center also offers a variety of ESL Student Resources.