We’re getting quite a collection of ELT blog posts over here at ESL Library! Now that we’ve added 150 posts on grammar, punctuation, vocabulary, spelling, and teaching tips, we thought it was a good time to feature all these resources in one handy place. We hope teachers and students will find this list useful. If you see anything missing from our list that you’d like us to blog about, please let us know in the comment section below.
Grammar
Verbs
- Simple Present Vs. Present Progressive
- Simple Past Vs. Past Progressive
- Can We Ever Use “Ever” with the Simple Past?
- 5 Fun Activities for Irregular Verbs
- Simple Future: Teaching the Three Forms
- Simple Future Vs. Future Progressive
- 5 Easy Steps for Teaching the Present Perfect and the Present Perfect Progressive
- Past Perfect Vs. Past Perfect Progressive
- Future Perfect Vs. Future Perfect Progressive
- Teaching Mixed Tenses
- How to Teach “Used To” in 6 Easy Steps
- Used To, Get Used To, and Be Used To
- Causative Verbs
- The Passive Causative
- How Do You Teach Phrasal Verbs?
- 8 Ways to Practice Idioms in Class
- Tips for Teaching the Subjunctive
- An Easy Way to Teach Conditionals
- Gerunds and Infinitives: Helpful Teaching Tips
- Exceptions to the Noun + Infinitive Rule
- 5 Verbs with Meaning Changes: Gerunds and Infinitives – Advanced
- Why Do We Use “Looking Forward To” with a Second -ING Verb?
- Subject-Verb Agreement: Non-Count Nouns That End in “S”
- Hope Vs. Wish
- Look, Appear, Feel + Adjective or Adverb?
- Progressive Vs. Continuous and Other Synonymous Grammatical Terms
- Recommend, Suggest, Advise: Verbs That Have Multiple Sentence Patterns
Other
- 7 Adverb Patterns
- Adverbs of Frequency
- Adverbs with Two Forms
- Look, Appear, Feel + Adjective or Adverb?
- Preposition or Adverb?
- However: 7 Sentence Positions & 2 Uses
- What’s the Deal with Because, Since, As, and Due To?
- Still, No Longer & Not Anymore
- Adjective Order and Punctuation
- Comparative Adjectives
- Superlative Adjectives
- Restrictive & Non-Restrictive Adjective Clauses
- Relative Pronouns – Formality Scales
- How to Teach -ED/-ING Adjectives: 9 Simple Steps
- “Go Home” – Why Do We Drop Prepositions and Articles in Certain English Expressions?
- Tricky Quantifiers: Some, Any, Every, Each & No
- “There Is A” Vs. “There Is The”
- Do You Know Vs. Did You Know
- We Vs. Us
- Reflexive Vs. Intensive Pronouns
- Team: Who, What, or Which?
- Forming the Possessive of Words Ending in -S
- Suggestions with Modals of Advice and Necessity
- Modals of Possibility: May, Might, Could
- Parallel Structure and Paired Joining Terms (not only…but also, both…and, either…or, neither…nor)
- Or or And in Negative Sentences?
- Each Other’s or Each Others’? Each Other or One Another?
- What’s the Difference between “a Number of” and “the Number of”?
- When Do We Use “All of the”, “All the”, or “All”?
- Tag Questions Are Fun to Teach, Aren’t They?
- Is It Correct to Say “I’m Done”?
- Why Can’t We Say “Funner”?
- How Unique Is “Unique”?
Spelling & Vocabulary
- How to Define Words in Class
- American Vs. British Spelling in ELT Materials
- Fast Food Vocabulary: American English Vs. British English
- Prefer Vs. Rather
- All Right Vs. Alright
- Inquire Vs. Enquire
- Hanged Vs. Hung
- Nauseous Vs. Nauseated
- Especially Vs. Specially
- Compliment Vs. Complement
- Either Vs. Neither
- People Vs. Persons
- Sleigh Vs. Sled
- Learned Vs. Learnt
- Addictive Vs. Addicting
- Any Time Vs. Anytime
- Everyday Vs. Every Day
- Lay Vs. Lie: Let’s Lay This Matter to Rest!
- How to Explain Despite Vs. Although
- Progressive Vs. Continuous and Other Synonymous Grammatical Terms
- Teaching Tips on Than and Then
- Teaching Tips on It’s and Its
- Teaching Tips on They’re, Their, and There
- Teaching Tips on You’re and Your
- Teaching Tips on To, Too, and Two
- Teaching Tips on Many and Much
- Take Out, Takeout, or Take-Out? Differences in Two-Word Verbs, Nouns & Adjectives
- Can Hardly Wait or Can’t Hardly Wait?
- Resume, Résumé, or Resumé?
- Tim Hortons, Hortons’, or Horton’s? Donut or Doughnut?
- Shorty Awards: Singular or Plural? And Should “Twitter” Be Capitalized?
- Too & Enough
- So, Such & Too
- Assure, Ensure & Insure
- Tricky Halloween Vocab to Teach Your Students
- Confusing Singular & Plural Forms: Phenomenon/Phenomena, Medium/Media
- Common Words Ending in -ance & -ence
- Forming the Possessive of Words Ending in -S
- When Do We Capitalize “President”?
- When Do We Capitalize “Prime Minister”?
- Why Can’t We Say “Funner”?
- How Unique Is “Unique”?
- When to Capitalize Directional Words
- Saying & Writing Fractions in English
- Abbreviations for Years: How to Use BC, AD, BCE & CE Correctly
- 6 Commonly Confused Word Pairs
- 4 Ways to Teach New Vocabulary
- 4 Activities for Reviewing Vocabulary
Punctuation
- Commas in Independent & Dependent Clauses
- Punctuation Rules: Parentheses
- Using the Em Dash Correctly
- Adjective Order and Punctuation
- When to Use Hyphens: Rules for Multiple-Word Adjectives
- How Useful Is the Semicolon?
- In Defence of the Serial Comma
- Apostrophe Roundup
Teaching & Activities
- Suggested Teaching Order for ESL Library’s Lessons
- How to Define Words in Class
- How to Answer Students’ Questions
- How to Make a Lesson Plan
- Macro and Micro Lesson Planning
- Using Listening Transcripts in Class
- Teaching Tips from the Plain Language Conference
- Sentence Stress: Worksheet
- My Favourite Warm-Up Activity
- My Favourite Icebreaker Activity
- My Favourite Fun, Student-Generated Speaking Activity
- 5 Ways to Make Students Feel Comfortable in Your Class
- 5 Fun Activities for Irregular Verbs
- 8 Ways to Practice Idioms in Class
- 4 Ways to Teach New Vocabulary
- 4 Activities for Reviewing Vocabulary
- 3 Ways to Make Reading Lessons More Interactive
- 6 Steps for Conducting an Interview in English
- 6 Ways to Set Goals with Students
Holidays
- Holiday Expressions and Capitalization Rules
- Valentine’s Day Capitalization and Punctuation Rules
- Presidents’ Day, Presidents Day, or President’s Day?
- Saint Patrick’s or St. Patrick’s? Paddy or Patty?
- April Fools’ Day Capitalization and Punctuation Rules
- 10 Halloween Idioms & Expressions
- Tricky Halloween Vocab to Teach Your Students
- Morbid Words to Learn for Halloween
- What Are You Grateful For This Thanksgiving?
- 7 Christmas and New Year’s Classroom Activities
- When to Write “New Year’s”, “New Year”, and “new year”
- Happy Beatles Day! (Or Is It Beatles’ Day?)
- English Lessons on Terry Fox
- Grammar Rules for the Olympics
Language Controversies
- Confusing Singular & Plural Forms: Phenomenon/Phenomena, Medium/Media
- Learned Vs. Learnt
- Progressive Vs. Continuous and Other Synonymous Grammatical Terms
- In Defence of the Serial Comma
- Olympics: Singular or Plural?
- The Great Debate over the Third Person Singular Pronoun: He, She, or They?
Behind the Scenes
- Creating Our In-House Style Guide
- American Vs. British Spelling in ELT Materials
- The Capitalization of Certain Terms: Exercise, Page, Chapter, Unit, Paragraph, Line
- New & Revised Grammar Practice Worksheets
Related
- We have over 100 grammar lessons in our Grammar Practice Worksheets, Grammar Stories, Basic Grammar Sentences, and Simple Sentences sections.
- Do you teach young learners? Check out my collection of grammar tips and activities on our sister site, Sprout English: 50+ Grammar, Vocabulary & Pronunciation Resources for Teaching Young ELLs.
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barbara rushforth says:
Jan 14, 2016 at 7:01 pm
I am in UK. I am teaching a Syrian refugee. A man of 60+. He thought the lesson on “a” “any” “some” was the best one yet. Really enjoyed the exercises and learnt a lot. He needs to learn grammar.
Tanya Trusler says:
Jan 15, 2016 at 12:43 pm
I’m honoured our resources are being used for such a worthy cause. Thanks for letting us know, Barbara!
Tanya Trusler says:
Jan 15, 2016 at 1:22 pm
If anyone is wondering about the lesson Barbara mentions, it’s our Quantifiers: Some & Any lesson in our Grammar Practice Worksheets section. https://esllibrary.com/courses/88/lessons
Tracy-Lynne Ahier says:
Jan 11, 2016 at 8:48 am
I am so appreciative of all the excellent materials you create and provide. If you are ever looking for another story idea, I would love to have my students read the inspiring story of the 33 miners rescued in Chile. Thanks again!
Tanya Trusler says:
Jan 11, 2016 at 4:59 pm
Hi Tracy,
Thanks very much for the kind words! We have a lesson on the Chilean miners’ rescue here: https://esllibrary.com/courses/98/lessons/1400/teacher_pdf
We agree that it is an inspiring story! Please let us know if you have any other suggestions.
Thanks a lot,
Tanya