Problem 1: Need for a range of grammar instruction Web sites from fairly basic ESOL or ABE which are: free; not too heavily commercial; fairly easy to use; do not require the visitor to give a lot of personal information; do not require downloading anything; and which could be directly useful either to a teacher or to a student.

16 Web Page Solutions:

1. daily grammar
Offers an email grammar lesson a day, followed by a short quiz.  Current lessons in the archive are Parts of Speech and Parts of a Sentence with each part followed by a short quiz of 3 or 4 examples. The archived quizzes are not interactive and quiz answers are given immediately after the quiz.  The author, Bill Johanson, a junior high school English teacher, does a good job of focusing each lesson on small
manageable topics. It might be usable by lower level (ESOL 3 or Intermediate ABE?) students able to handle the computer without a lot of assistance or who know how to use email, and by higher level students who need some remediation on the topics.  Although a commercial site, there are no distracting ads, only non-intrusive links to the commercial sponsors!
http://www.dailygrammar.com/

2. About.com
A commercial site offering topical, annotated links. This page on the About.com offers annotated links to ESOL grammar sites, both commercial and non-commercial.  Not recommended for student use; some sites may be useful for teachers.
Note:  The main page has click-able ads at the top and on the sides of the window, and, when entering links, keeps an ad frame at the top of the new site window.
http://esl.about.com/education/esl/msub2.htm

3. The Book of Grammar
Saratoga High School., Saratoga, CA.  Mr. McBride's Sophomore English lessons. Includes lessons on verb tenses, participles, gerunds, adverbs, sentence diagramming, etc. A lesson review mentioned but not posted online.  The lessons are clear.
http://home.flash.net/~dmcb/grammar/book.htm

4. The Internet TESL Journal For Teachers of English as a Second Language:  Articles, Research Papers, Lessons Plans, Classroom Handouts, Teaching Ideas & Links) Monthly web journal for ESOL teachers. The host site is Aichi Institute of Technology in Aichi, Japan.  Includes the site below:
http://iteslj.org/

5. Self Study Quizzes for ESOL Students
An interesting set of quizzes at a variety of levels. Check out the idioms quizzes for a chuckle ...
no wonder English is so hard to learn.
http://www.aitech.ac.jp/~iteslj/quizzes/#WRI

6. Dave's ESL Cafe
Offers a chat center, a help center to answer student questions, some grammar and vocabulary quizzes, idioms and phrasal verbs with definitions, etc.
http://www.pacificnet.net/~sperling/eslcafe.html

7. Quia
A very interesting site with lots of activities for students and potential for teachers developing lessons. Teachers can enter their own exercises to use in already set up games like Hangman, Match It, Concentration, etc. and then have their students log in to those lessons.  Students could use the site independently but would probably benefit more with teacher guidance. This site has activities (including some that are grammar related) for all levels of ESOL and ABE, as well as in other subject areas such as geography, history, math, chemistry, biology and other languages.  Even though it is a commercial site, the advertising is not intrusive.
http://www.quia.com/

8. E. L. Easton
Contains links to a wide variety of worldwide sources of lessons on many areas related to teaching English, including grammar .  The site is definitely best used at the teacher's direction, but upper level students with computer skills could use it independently.
http://eleaston.com/index.html

9. Guide to Grammar and Writing
For upper level ESOL or Pre/High School students. Pop-up Quiz label at the bottom of the screen leads to the quiz site listed next.
http://cctc2.commnet.edu/grammar/index.htm

10. Interactive Quizzes
Don Hardy, Northern Illinois University English Dept. A mixed bag of quizzes; many are likely to be difficult for students unless upper ESOL or ABE level. Could be used by ESOL students with higher levels of education for independent practice if they are comfortable using computers.
http://cctc2.commnet.edu/grammar/quiz_list.htm

11. CESOL (Computers and English for Speakers of other Languages)
The CESOL site is interesting and contains lots of tips and links on issues such as integrating technology into the ESOL curriculum and instructional methods.
http://easternlincs.worlded.org/docs/cesol/cesol.htm

12. Funbrain.com Grammar Gorillas
CESOL suggested site and description by CESOL: "Offers a fun, interactive game for identifying parts of a sentence.  The homonym and its/it's-there/their/they're quizzes were particularly fun for students. (Go to site. Choose Quizzes, then Spelling.) Note: Taking the quizzes is a good way for students to practice using the mouse."
http://www.funbrain.com/grammar/

13. The Linguistic Funland
The Linguistic Funland looks like a good resource for teachers with links to a really wide range of resources, including the ESLoop below.  The home site might be visually confusing for students new to computer use since it is crammed with lots of links.
http://linguistic-funland.com/

14. ESLoop
A searchable world-wide list of linked ESOL sites (117 at current count) From their site description at: http://linguistic-funland.com/esloop/esloop.html
ESLoop is a collection of sites relevant to English Language Teaching and Learning on the World-Wide Web. Each site is linked to the next, so that no matter where you start, you will eventually make your way around all the sites and end up back at the beginning.... ESLoop sites are all relevant to English language teaching and learning in some manner, from student projects and activities to scholarly papers to English
for Science and Technology and job opportunities. We hope that you will find ESLoop to be a resource helpful and even fun to navigate.

Note:  Thus far, I have only had enough time to make quick checks of some of the ESLoop sites.  Some are clearly commercial, offering courses for a fee, or are aimed at specific linguistic groups, purposes, or locations, i.e. recruiting English teachers to teach in Eastern Europe (Crossroads Europe), English lessons for Japanese living in Japan (Japanese cultural context - Jim Schweizer's ESOL Quizzes and Japanese proverbs), etc. A few are loaded with advertising, including some with pop-up window ads.  Some of the sites offer good resources for teachers on vocabulary, idioms and other issues in addition to grammar
http://nav.webring.org/cgi-bin/navcgi?ring=esloop;list

15. The Literacy List
A really helpful site which includes some of the above links, lots of others, email lists, teacher lesson plans, and more.
http://www.alri.org/literacylist.html

16. Kathy Schrock's Guide for Educators
A long established site with enormous numbers of annotated links for almost every subject area imaginable.  Although intended for K-12 teachers and librarians, the site is well worth the time for teachers of adult students.  The site used to be non-commercial, but is now sponsored by The Discovery Channel/Discovery School.  The advertising is not intrusive.
http://school.discovery.com/schrockguide/index.html
The Literature and Language Arts links address is
http://school.discovery.com/schrockguide/arts/artlit.html
 

Problem and solutions contributed in April, 2000 by:
Bob Aimo
Community Learning Center
Cambridge, MA
(The research on these sites, conducted by Bob Aimo, was enabled by the support of the Community Learning Center.)

Problem 2: Basic grammar software for our ESL/ESOL classes in our computer lab

Solutions: Commercial software

1. We use Focus on Grammar http://www.exceller.com/focus-on-grammar.html It has a simple interface. Both teachers and students like using it.

2. Grammar module of English Discoveries http://www.englishdiscoveries.com

Problem: from Joseph Passeri, Boston, MA. Problem and solutions posted to TCBoston electronic list 11/29/05

Solution 1: Ngaio Schiff, ESOL Program Administrator and Technology Coordinator
S C A L E, Somerville, MA

Solution 2: Joel Nogic, Boston Public Schools, Adult Learning Center, Family Literacy Program