[eal-bilingual] influence of first language

I'd concentrate on errors that intefere with meaning most of all. I also think that grammar  is best taught in context, rather than from a book of exercises. [though I know that some students do like to have a book to take home with them.] 
  This is my list of key priorities for more advanced EAL learners

   Verbs, especially all past tenses and modal verbs.  
   Subject-verb agreements  
   Comparative phrases  
   Pronoun reference  
   Articles/uncountables  
   Choice of prepositions [including phrasal verbs] 
  Some of these errors are ' noticing ' problems, and can be checked through proof reading activities. E.g. checking pronoun referencing, subject /verb agreement.

  Others are ' learning' problems e.g. using the article/plurals if you speak a language that doesn't have them. Using a wider variety of past tenses accurately.

  For verbs, I use timelines and visuals to show sequence of events etc. For comparative phrases I ask students to learn some set phrases and practice using them again and again.
  Prepositions + verbs are essentially a matter of vocab learning. Try 'translating' phrases into the latinate equivalent which may be easier to remember.  [e.g. get out of = extricate, extract ]

  Very few GCSE questions [ apart from English obviously] actually require perfect grammatical English. You could also try sharing this list with other subject teachers to help reinforce things across the curriculum a bit more.
  Catharine

Janet Storey <janet_storey at btinternet.com> wrote:
  Help! 

Has anyone got any suggestions on how to help older EAL pupils erradicate errors resulting from the influence of first language in extended writing eg. missing final "s", missing articles, problems with tenses, spelling? 

If not what would you give priority to when helping them improve writing tasks?

Thanks

Janet Storey