Students can color code short reading passages according to the parts of speech. Until students can recognize nouns, verbs and adjectives easily, it will be very difficult for them to parse complex sentences. Color coding the parts of speech in their reading will encourage them to pay close attention to the way sentences in English are assembled and to the suffixes commonly associated with each type of word. This will help them with reading fluency, writing and grammatical accuracy when they speak.
When reading passages with complex sentence structure, students can color code the sentences according to their phrases. This will give them a visual representation of which groups of words are functioning as a single part of speech. For example, in the sentence "The man in the green hat was holding out his hand," a student might mark the subject ("The man in the green hat") in one color, the verb ("was holding out") in another and the object ("his hand") in a third.
Students may color code their reading or writing according to its independent and subordinate clauses. They should use a more vivid color for the independent clauses, so that they stand out clearly as the most important parts of the sentences. For example, in the sentence, "Before the storm broke, we herded the cows into the barn, where they would be safe," a student might highlight "we herded the cows into the barn" in a bright yellow and underline "before the storm broke" and "where they would be safe" in a pale pink.
If students are reading articles or writing essays about articles, they are likely to encounter both direct quotes and reported speech. These two reference forms require different grammatical and stylistic techniques, and it can be a challenge for ESL students to memorize the various ways to approach them. Students can color code their reading with the phrases that introduce direct quotes in one color and those that introduce reported speech in another; then, when it comes time to write their own essays, they can easily refer back to their reading for examples of how to quote correctly.