ESL

from TED Talks: At TEDxDubai, longtime English teacher Patricia Ryan asks a provocative question: is the world’s focus on English preventing the spread of great ideas in other languages? (For instance: what if Einstein had to pass the TOEFL?) It’s a passionate defense of translating and sharing ideas.
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22 minutes. In this program, three bilingual and bicultural women discuss their experience with language and identity, and the ways in which culture has influenced both.
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26 minutes. "This program explains the ins and outs of common, proper, compound, and demonstrative nouns; personal, possessive, and demonstrative pronouns; and adjectives, including the tiny article. Singular and plural subjects are also covered."
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35 minutes. Covers "the past, present, and future forms of the simple, perfect, progressive, and perfect progressive tenses. Conditional statements, conjugation, helping verbs, and the verbals—gerunds, infinitives, and past and present participles—are considered as well. Dangling participles and other faux pas are also explained."

34 minutes. "Part one of this program completes the study of the building blocks of grammar with a thorough explanation of adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, and interjections—wow! Then, part two covers the basic rules of syntax, featuring subjects and predicates; appositive and verb phrases; direct and indirect objects; linking verbs; predicate nominatives, nouns of direct address, and appositives; dependent and independent clauses; and compound and complex sentences. Also, the egregious sentence fragment is introduced."

28 minutes. "When is a noun not a noun? ... Part one of this program summarizes the parts of speech and then looks at the ways in which one part of speech can be used syntactically as another. In part two, tiny animated dancers and other helpers provide examples of errors in subject/verb agreement and article/noun agreement. Idiom is also addressed."

25 minutes. " Part one of this program deals with three unequivocal errors—sentence fragments, comma splices, and run-on sentences—and three major enemies of clarity—tense shifts, vague pronoun references, and faulty parallels. Contraction/possessive pronoun confusion is also sorted out. In part two, syntactical errors that many no longer consider unacceptable are examined: contractions, split infinitives, and dangling prepositions."

17 minutes. "The use of the period in commands, in declarative sentences, and with abbreviations; the question mark in interrogative sentences and to show disbelief or sarcasm; and the exclamation point for emphasis are all discussed in detail."

31 minutes. "Section one deals with the separation of items in a list. Section two shows how to set off introductory elements such as interjections, prepositional and participial phrases, and independent, dependent, and subordinate clauses. Section three demonstrates the use of interrupters, including nouns of direct address, appositive phrases, and non-restrictive clauses. Section four explains how to employ commas to provide emphasis and enhance clarity."

22 minutes. "Litmus tests such as the “furthermore” test and the “and here it is” test make it easy to tell when to utilize these punctuation marks."

29 minutes. "[T]his program demystifies the art of working with quotation marks, parentheses, and brackets. Both the basics and the finer points are covered, including when to use double quotation marks and when to use singles, the difference between quoting and paraphrasing, and how quotation marks, parentheses, and brackets interact with other forms of punctuation."

22 minutes. Covers "the many functions of hyphens, apostrophes, slashes, and ellipses."