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Supporting Activities and Resources for ELL and Developmental Students

  • Page ID
    20743
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    Supporting Activities and Resources for Developmental and ELL Students

    Now that all students have the opportunity to move directly into first-year composition courses, some students may find that they need extra support to successfully complete the expectations and student learning outcomes of these courses. The following tables list particular topics and activities that we have found help our students meet learning outcomes or fill gaps that exist in their declarative or procedural knowledge. Note that some of the activities and concepts listed below may benefit both ELL and developmental students. Concepts and skills for which the majority of first-year composition students need instruction are not included here, but are embedded in the assignments on the previous page.

    Supporting Activities/Concepts for Developmental Students

    The following tables list hyperlinks to where you can find instructional materials for the various concepts and skills located throughout this course book. Please see the previous page to see where in the course plan such materials may be introduced in terms of scaffolding. Alternatively, you or a tutor can work with the student to create a plan to work on these skills and concepts outside of the unit framework.

    Student Skills Reading-Writing Process Reading Idea Development Organization Grammar
    becoming a successful college student writing the essay draft inference strategies for developing paragraphs outlining and methods of organizing writing subject-verb agreement
    understanding yourself as a learner paragraph types and purpose distinguishing between main ideas and supporting details types of support apostrophes
    narration, description, and classification

    reading strategies -- previewing

    question marks
    vocabulary coordination
    what is academic writing? fragments
    helping verbs and modal auxiliaries
    irregular verbs
    negative statements
    plural nouns
    prepositional phrases
    extra punctuation practice
    run-on sentences
    sentence structure
    verbs and verb tense
    word choice -- synonyms and antonyms

    Supporting Activities/Concepts for English Language Learners

    Student Skills Reading-Writing Process Reading Idea Development Grammar
    becoming a successful college student vocabulary inference strategies for developing paragraphs subject-verb agreement
    distinguishing between main ideas and supporting details working with sources part 2 articles
    count-noncount nouns and plural nouns
    fragments
    helping verbs (modal auxiliaries)
    infinitives and irregular verbs
    negative statements
    extra punctuation practice
    question form
    word form
    verbs and verb tense

    Note about relative pronoun exercise 1: This grammar topic is included for all first-year composition students. This exercise can be a good opportunity to talk about gender inclusivity, the use of "they" as a personal pronoun for two-spirit people, and looking at our unchecked biases about what genders perform certain activities and jobs.

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    This page was most recently updated on June 7, 2020.