The aim of this leaflet

Perhaps you are not sure what you need to improve or how to learn Grammar by yourself. This leaflet aims to help you plan your Grammar learning more effectively. It presents a series of steps that you can follow, from the first step of 'Thinking about what you need to improve' right through to 'Evaluating your progress.'

Planning your learning

Below is a suggested series of steps that you can follow when planning your grammar learning. You can get help from the SAC Advisers at any stage of the process.

If you are not sure which areas to work on, come and see an SAC Adviser. It will be helpful if you can show them a sample of your writing. You can also do one of the diagnostic tests listed below. These are tests that 'diagnose' the areas where you have most difficulty. The SAC diagnostic tests (apart from AutoLANG) are on the 'Grammar Practice' shelf in the Reading + Writing Area.

Diagnostic tests in the SAC

• How English Works, pp. 3-11: Diagnostic tests for different levels are provided.
• English Grammar in Use (New Edition), pp. 301-309: The Study Guide enables you to find out your weaknesses in separate grammatical categories and helps you to decide which units you need to study in the book.
• Oxford Practice Grammar (New Edition), pp. viii-xiii you can take the Starting Test and find out which areas you are weak at. Answers and keys to relevant units are on p. 385.
• Test and Practise Your English, Book 1 (pp. 1-45) & Book 2 (pp. 1-34): Diagnostic tests are provided in context, and you can choose the ones which interest you. A wrong answer in one of the tests has a cross-reference in the Test Key that says which Practice Exercise should be done.
• Check My Words: an MsWord toolbar available on the SAC PCs or can be downloaded from http://mywords.ust.hk. The 'English Grammar Guide' under 'Resources' describes most of the common errors in English made by speakers of Chinese.

Diagnostic tests on the Web

• Test your English http://www.edunet.com/english/practice/test-ces.html
  Online diagnostic test from Colchester English Study Center in the UK.
• Test Bank http://www.educ.goteborg.se/usam/pforum/elpa/gramtest.html
  100-item grammar test from the university of Goteborg in Sweden. You can use this to identify areas you are weak at or to get an idea of your overall level. (For comparison, upper secondary school students in Sweden, after c. 6-7 years of English, scored approx. 65% on the test.)

You may find it easier to make and evaluate progress if you focus on one or two areas at a time rather than trying to improve everything at the same time.

Devise a short or long term plan by considering questions like What? How? When? How long? Plan Achieved?. You can modify your plan whenever necessary.

Try out different materials to see which one suits you when you devise your self-access learning plan. Refer to the Advice Sheet Choosing Materials for Grammar Learning (G3) to get advice for choosing materials suitable for your needs and learning styles. To meet your specific needs, check out both practice and reference books on the Grammar Practice and Grammar Reference shelves in the SAC.

In addition to the grammar books with rules, it is useful to look for:

• exercises which enable you to check how the rules you have learned are applied to English sentences in context
• exercises in which you can practise grammar in actual writing.
• opportunities for reading and writing or listening and speaking activities which expose you to 'Grammar in the Real World'

A useful site for self-directed learning of Grammar is HKU's VEC page 'Grammar Pathways': http://ec.hku.hk/vec/grammar/grampath.htm. This provides suggestions for designing your own self-study Grammar programme.

In order to evaluate your progress, whenever you work on a particular grammar point, try self-testing with the exercises and the answer key in the material before and after you study the grammar aspect.

When you find it difficult to evaluate your own progress, seek help from your English course instructor, SAC Advisers, or English Writing Center consultants to comment on your grammar in writing.

For more advice on evaluating your progress, see the relevant section in the Advice Sheet Grammar for Writing (G4).

And Now...

If you would like any help or advice, or just a chat about your progress, please get in touch - we are here to support your independent learning! To contact us:

• see an Adviser, on duty at the SAC Advice Desk (for details of advisers and their availability, please go to http://lc.ust.hk/~sac/sacadviser.html)
• e-mail lcsac (lcsac@ust.hk) with your query;
• ask at the reception counter of the SAC — if the receptionist cannot help you directly, s/he will pass your query on to one of the SAC advisers.

Note
The introductory leaflet in this series is the leaflet Improving your Grammar (G1).

This advice sheet is part of the Grammar series of leaflets supporting independent learning, produced by the HKUST Language Center SAC team. This leaflet was first written by Kyungnan Park, 1999 and edited by Jacqueline Lam Kam-mei, 2000. Revised by Richard Pemberton, 2001. Version 3. Last updated: 27 February 2001. If you copy from this leaflet, please acknowledge the source. Thanks.