FrontPage > Materials > Lydon: Xword Grammar for Students of ESL

James A Lydon

This page contains links to pdf files for the book, Xword Grammar for Students of English as a Second Language,

by Jim Lydon, edited by Judith Gex and Bonny Hart 

The book is appropriate for teacher training and ESOL students intermediate and up. Lower level students might benefit from the earlier lessons.

Teachers are free to copy and use this material with their students. 

If you would prefer the MSWord documents, let me know.

There is now a version that uses the same terminology as Sue Livingston's book, Working Text, (V/XO, V/XS, V/XD, VD-T-N) If you are interested, email me. bonnyrhart@gmail.com

Introduction:

Xword Grammar Exercises for Students of English as a Second Language was written by the late Jim Lydon. I never had the privilege of meeting him, but I’ll always be grateful. Judith Gex  revised the book in 1993. While I was a student at the New School, I observed Judy’s class, and she was kind enough to give me a copy.  As I read it, English grammar finally started to make sense to me. I realized that it is structurally very simple and regular and not really an accumulation of disjointed rules and “exceptions,” as many students (and teachers) perceive it.

Xword grammar is especially good for our (adult immigrant) students, who often have rich vocabularies, but no idea of how to put a sentence together. I always tell them it’s a skeleton that they can hang their vocabulary on.  Xword grammar makes error correction much easier. I usually only have to circle a mistake – the students will correct it themselves.

I retyped the book to make it visually friendlier, added a few lessons, and separated it all into 27 lessons. I also added a short quiz for each lesson and a review for lessons 1-13 and 1-27. My level 3 students can do the entire course in two 13-week semesters.

The lessons are in the order of the original book. I find that this order works, but some teachers have moved the lessons around a bit. Lesson 1 through Lesson 9 ½ should be done in sequence. When questions come up, I often give a “preview” of a future lesson and explain that we’ll learn more about it later.

Please feel free to contact me with questions.

Bonny Hart

The New School, English Language Studies Department

bonnyrhart@gmail.com