The main aim of this course is to explore certain features of English structure in such a way as to provide a small scale map of areas that will be viewed in much greater detail. When ESL students study grammar, they learn to analyze language by breaking sentences into separate pieces in order to focus on individual parts to recognize what the parts are (e.g. the difference between noun phrases, verb phrases and other types of phrases related to words' types) and to understand how these parts function together to convey meaning. But the study of grammar presented in this course doesn't end with learning about structures and functions within the sentence, but rather uses the sentence as a starting point for exploring how grammar can be used in discourse to achieve more effective communication. This course is meant to give a solid background for upcoming writing/ composition courses.