Page 94 - The Ontario Curriculum, Grades 9-12: English As a Second Language and English Literacy Development, 2007

ESL Level 3, Open
Language Reference Chart – ESL Level 3
Nouns
collective nouns (e.g., team, crowd, group, family, police, audience) + verb agreement
Pronouns
indefinite: some, no, any, every + body/thing
relative: who, that, which, whose in defining relative clause (e.g., The girl who sits beside you plays tennis. That’s the man whose daughter sits beside you.)
Verbs
simple past of low-frequency irregular verbs (e.g., sweep/swept, rise/rose, light/lit, shine/shone)
present perfect (e.g., He has just arrived.)
past perfect (e.g., They had studied English before they arrived in Canada.)
used to (e.g., They used to eat in the cafeteria.)
modals: should, could, would (e.g., I should leave before it rains. We could do that tomorrow.)
simple passive (e.g., The book was found in the desk yesterday. Ferraris are made in Italy.)
simple use of infinitives with would like, ask, tell (e.g., I would like to go to the concert. The teacher asked me to study hard.)
simple use of gerunds: go + ing (e.g., They are going skating.); gerund with verbs of like/dislike (e.g., She hates cooking. We love skiing.); gerund as subject (e.g., Writing in English is hard.)
know, think, hope, believe, feel + that (e.g., I think that you are right.) conditional: type 1 / probable (e.g., If it rains, we will stay home.)
Adjectives
irregular comparative/superlative (e.g., better/best, worse/worst, more/most) comparative using er/more + than (e.g., bigger than, more interesting than)
superlative using est/most + in/of (e.g., oldest of the group, most expensive in the store)
comparative using as ... as (e.g., My plans are as important as hers.) adjective phrases (e.g., The man in the red hat lives close to me.) other, another, each
Adverbs
verb + two adverbs (e.g., They drove very slowly through the storm.) adjective + ly (e.g., happily, truly, extremely, beautifully) somewhere, nowhere, anywhere, everywhere
Transition words and phrases
conjunctions: before, after, when, then, while, both ... and, in contrast, in conclusion, yet, for example, therefore, similarly, as a result, on the other hand, at first
This chart shows the structures that students are expected to learn through work done in all four strands. These structures should be taught in context rather than in isolation (e.g., while conducting a survey, students focus on using comparative and superlative forms of adjectives appropriately). Some English language learners may require reinforcement and repetition of language structures from previous course levels in order to achieve mastery.
I. Grammatical Structures
THEONTARIOCURRICULUM,GRADES9–12 | ESLandELD
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