research

OXFORD + CEFR

Here at EnglishGrammar.Pro, we are always looking for new resources that position language features on the CEFR scale.  Note that, unlike Cambridge which uses what students can produce, Oxford uses the receptive knowledge of students to allocate the levels.  One great resource is their phrase list. The Oxford Phrase List is a list of 750 […]

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English lexical bundles and their most frequent equivalent forms in French

In this post, we put common lexical bundles that French EFL students use in their writing, through our GRAMMAR PROFILER.  Magali Paquot wrote a paper about Lexical bundles.  Here are the significant forms found in the ICLE – FR: Here are our expert examples: You‘ll be tempted to tear it off. listen They may never be considered as such by religion, but they are just as important as the ones in your textbooks. listen Kaleb‘s art can be viewed as deeply rooted in the pop minimalism of Aureur or Baer.

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Year 4 spelling homework

Here is a list of vocabulary a year 4 student got sent home to match with definitions.  We put the words into the 14-billion-word iWeb corpus to check the ranking of how common the words are against themselves.  Note that the number to the right is how many occurrences of the word exist in the

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grammatical collocations

Here are 8 basic sub-categories of grammatical collocations:  preposition + noun (see below) noun + preposition (see below) noun + to-infinitive (research on another page) noun + that-clause (click here) adjective + preposition adjective + to-infinitive adjective + that-clause  There are 19 different verb patterns including verb + to-infinitive,  verb + bare infinitive etc. For more information read. —

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Children’s grammar?

We love testing the grammar profiler app against all types of texts.  The following comes from an 8-year-old in grade 3 in an Australian primary school.  She was asked to write a paragraph about anything.  The CLAWS7 tagger had a problem marking the part of speech for a few words since they are new.  And

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Pearson – text analyzer

The Pearson text analyzer seems to be another tool based on finding reading texts for students based only on vocabulary.  It is not going to predict the level of what a student has produced. There will be a level or two between what students can read and produce.  A B2 reading text is probably something

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Duo Lingo – CEFR checker

I came across what seems to be another vocabulary only ‘predictor.  The ‘CEFR checker’ is most probably drawn from the English Vocabulary Profile. As with the ‘Write & Improve’ website’s CEFR level predictor, I put through 10 sentences that contain C2 grammar points.  Both of these gave me a prediction of B2.  The same sentences

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grammarly review

I am always wondering about the negative effect that ‘Grammarly’ has on English learners’ writing ability. I have it on to help me spot basic typos, which is really useful, but learners might just click on every suggestion that it makes.  Here are some examples of incorrect ‘correction advice’ in just two sentences I was working

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New Academic Word List vocabulary not in the English Vocabulary Profile

Until June 2021, the English Grammar Profiler tool that automatically tags grammar and vocabulary used both the EVP and the AWL for the same words which was making level prediction less accurate.  Today we have removed the AWL tagging to allow for the full EVP to highlight its levels across vocabulary more accurately.  Instead of

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ABLE (adjective suffix)

AVAILABLE, COMFORTABLE, VALUABLE, CAPABLE, REASONABLE, AFFORDABLE, SUITABLE, RELIABLE, APPLICABLE, SUSTAINABLE, STABLE, DURABLE, ACCEPTABLE, VULNERABLE, REMARKABLE, CONSIDERABLE, PORTABLE, ADJUSTABLE, ENJOYABLE, MEMORABLE, UNCOMFORTABLE, NOTABLE, COMPARABLE, KNOWLEDGEABLE, VIABLE, LIABLE, PROFITABLE, DESIRABLE, INEVITABLE, RENEWABLE, NOTICEABLE, PAYABLE, CHARITABLE, ADORABLE, ACCOUNTABLE, INVALUABLE, ABLE, REMOVABLE, FAVORABLE, PREDICTABLE, USABLE, UNBELIEVABLE, PRINTABLE, TAXABLE, MISERABLE, IDENTIFIABLE, UNDERSTANDABLE, QUESTIONABLE, UNAVAILABLE, PROBABLE, UNACCEPTABLE, UNPREDICTABLE, UNFORGETTABLE, REPUTABLE, UNSTABLE, CUSTOMIZABLE, DISPOSABLE, FASHIONABLE, MANAGEABLE, UNREASONABLE, ADVISABLE, RECOGNIZABLE, SCALABLE, WEARABLE, MEASURABLE, RESPECTABLE, PREFERABLE, BREATHABLE, FORMIDABLE, DOWNLOADABLE, INCAPABLE, READABLE, EQUITABLE, ACTIONABLE, INTERCHANGEABLE, DEPENDABLE, REUSABLE, HONORABLE, PLAYABLE, UNRELIABLE, ADAPTABLE, EXECUTABLE, INDISPENSABLE, NON-REFUNDABLE, RECHARGEABLE

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topics and tags

This is a personal note for the direction in future. All the research posts should use the tagging taxonomy to choose a number of nouns that are best to use alongside the grammar. It is already clear, where possible I choose, for example, B1 vocabulary to go with B2 grammar for being able to understand

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complexity pies

How do I predict the writing level using the pie chart in the ‘complexity checker‘ software? C2 language from CLC If more than 33% of a text is highlighted above A2 then it is probably from a C2 or proficient English writer. Or in other words,  66% of it is not basic A1 and A2. 

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Research

My education includes: A Post Graduate Certificate in Education with a GPA of 6. Three of the units were in TESOL and one was in educational research. (2020) Prior to that, I have a Bachelor in Visual Arts, but also two years of a Bachelor of Education – secondary teaching. (1995) I have also completed

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