Overview
Although writing is not really about grammar, knowledge about the English grammar is, however, a prerequisite to being a good writer. This presentation assignment gives you an opportunity to research into one of the aspects of grammar and to showcase whatever knowledge of the English grammar you already possess or you have gained from this research. The purpose of this assignment is to familiarize everybody in the class with the various aspects of grammar. Everybody will be able to benefit from everybody else’s presentation without having to spend countless hours researching into all those grammatical rules.

Research
Some good research is needed for this assignment. Keep in mind that while your classmates may not be experts on all aspects of grammar, most, if not all, of them know at least the basic rules of this language. Therefore, in your presentation, you should avoid those things that are common knowledge to most people. Focus on those aspects of your grammatical phenomenon that are often confusing and problematic. One source of research is the library, where you can search for grammar books. Make sure you consult a few, instead of just one, grammar books. You’ll be surprised to find that sometimes grammar books don’t always agree on certain issues. Another source of research would be the Internet. Following are some websites on grammar that might be helpful to you in completing this assignment:

Regular exercises
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/writers/by-topic.html
http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Writing/
http://www.smpcollege.com/guidebook/exercise_b.htm
http://webster.commnet.edu/HP/pages/darling/grammar.htm
http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/32.html
http://www.bedfordstmartins.com/exercisecentral/index.htm
http://www.english.uiuc.edu/cws/wworkshop/grammarmenu.htm
http://www.uottawa.ca/academic/arts/writcent/hypergrammar/grammar.html
http://www.wisc.edu/writetest/Handbook/GramStyPunct.html
http://www.esc.edu/htmlpages/writer/pandg/gramen.htm

ESL exercises
http://lc.byuh.edu/cnn_n/Prev_gram.html
http://www.hut.fi/u/rvilmi/LangHelp/Grammar
http://www.collegeem.qc.ca/cemdept/anglais/trouindx.htm

Your Tasks
Written Handout
First, prepare a one-to-two page handout that summarizes the useful information about your grammatical aspect. Your handout will be graded on its content, organization, and format design. Therefore, make every effort to make your handout informative, easy to use, and visually appealing.

Oral Presentation
Your oral presentation can take any form you deem appropriate. The most important thing to keep in mind is to get your classmates involved. Therefore, a good format would be to combine lecturing with some kind of an activity, such as small group work, quiz and discussion, questions and answers, etc. When you schedule your presentation, remember, though, that you should keep your presentation somewhere around 10 minutes. Excessively short or long presentations will get lower grades.

Grammar Topics
Pick a topic from the following list. If you would like to do your presentation on some topic other than what are listed here, you may propose it and get my approval if you make a good case for it.

• Spelling (easily misspelled words)
• Spelling (easily misused words)
• Agreement (subject-verb, pronoun-antecedent)
• Compound vs complex sentences
• Comma splices and run-ons
• Sentence fragments
• Appositives
• Dependent vs. independent clauses
• Restrictive vs. non-restrictive clauses
• Parallelism
• Active vs. passive voices
• Countable vs. uncountable nouns
• Articles
• Punctuation: comma
• Verbs and tenses
• Gerunds, participles, and infinitives

Presentation Schedule