Student with wide vocabulary but poor sentence structure

[Latif]

Hello fellow English teachers,

I think I'll probably have to solve this issue for myself, but I thought it couldn't hurt to ask here.

I have a German student studying for an exam, one is oral, the other is written. She has been studying English for 8 years in school. So she has really quite a large vocabulary and is able to express her opinions. I can understand her just fine.

The issue is her sentences... they very often just don't sound right, although the meaning of them is mostly clear. And there isn't a clearly identifiable problem, like wrong tense or anything like that. For example:

"This cartoon depicts a man who stands on a hill of luxury goods. The hill consists of a car, washing machine, camera, microwave, house, hairdryer, and so on. ... So the artist is trying to tell us, that not only luxury items make us happy. The most people think, that only money make themselves happy. Because when you have enough money, you can buy everything what you like. Probably this man has everything what he wanted, but what does it help?"

Any suggestions? I am thinking of just going back to basics and having her do a lot of lower-level grammar exercises. Your comments are most welcome.

[Awalls86]

Your student probably has a lot of fossilised mistakes in different grammar areas. I would suggest collecting a few examples in a particular grammar area and then focus on one grammar point at a time.
You could also record her and have her listen and correct her own speaking. She may not realise the mistakes she is making at the time.