ENGL000: Pre-College English

Read the lecture regarding how and why writing is important. Then choose one of the five items and do some writing that lays out examples that show how the idea expressed is true. What about this idea appeals to you? Discuss how this idea has created positive writing experiences for you, or if you haven't ever had very positive writing experiences, how it could make writing a more positive experience for you.

At its heart, writing is simply a form of communication that has many similarities to speech. But there are also some different rules to follow. Read this brief section on speech vs. writing.

Read this section and think about who some of your language communities are and how you change your language choices based on your environment.

Read this section about the primary difference between speech and writing and how it impacts the way you should approach your writing.

When you sit down to begin any writing task, there are two questions to ask yourself. The first is: What is the purpose of this writing task? (You could also think of this as, "Why am I writing?" or "What am I hoping to achieve by writing this?") The second question is: Who is my intended audience? (You could also think of this as, "Who is going to read this?"). These two factors are central to effective writing because they will shape how you approach the task. Follow the instructions to complete the activity on identifying your audience and purpose.

This course will be based on the four keys to good writing. Read this section to get an overview of these key features of effective writing we will look at in greater depth throughout the course.

Read this example of a good paragraph essay, and study the accompanying outline to see how it was put together.

Now that you have an idea of the basic structure, look at another paragraph and fill in the partially completed outline that follows it. After you are done, you can compare your outline to the answer key.

This course will focus on personal writing because it will allow us to focus on just the writing. Using outside sources and research in writing is a separate set of skills covered in ENGL001. Read the following section for an explanation of personal writing.

Read about the importance of being specific and avoiding making general unsupported statements about other people.

Now that you have read about being specific in personal writing, practice rewriting the following topic sentences. Answers will vary, but you can check your responses against the answer key after you are done.

Before starting any piece of writing, it is best to do some planning. This planning will entail considering the audience and purpose and doing some prewriting. There are three basic steps to prewriting: generating ideas, focusing ideas, and organizing ideas. Read about these three steps and some techniques you can use to achieve them and look at some examples of prewriting that were done for the Corner Store paragraph you read earlier. You will also practice prewriting for a paragraph essay you will write later. As you move forward through the next units, plan to use what you learn to revise and improve this paragraph.

Read this section about staying on topic, and then get some practice looking for unity in paragraphs by writing out the topic sentences and identifying off-topic sentences in this activity. Compare your responses to the answer key.

Now that you know the key points of a topic sentence, get some practice identifying the parts of a topic sentence in the following activity. After you have finished, compare your responses to the answer key.

Read the lecture about common errors you want to avoid when writing topic sentences. After reading about common errors, get some practice identifying effective topic sentences in this activity. After you have finished, compare your answers to the answer key.

Consider everything you have learned about topic sentences and get some practice writing them based on sets of main ideas in this activity. After you have finished, check your answers against the answer key. Note that answers will vary, but you should get a sense of whether you are on the right track.

Topic sentences will direct the content that follows them in almost all paragraphs, with introduction and conclusion paragraphs being rare exceptions. Read this overview about the key components of topic sentences.

Once you have written a good topic sentence that will help you stay on topic in your paragraph, it is time to start supporting the point made in that sentence. How you support your statements and ideas in writing is vital to its effectiveness. This support will make up the bulk of your writing. In this text, you will learn about different and complementary ways to support what you say.

An important way to approach support is to think about it in terms of your readers. Read the following annotated paragraph to see what some reader questions might be.

Complete this activity to continue thinking about the types of questions readers may have and get some practice identifying places in a paragraph essay where more support is needed – in other words, places that raise questions but do not go on to answer them. Check your responses against the answer key, but know that answers will vary.

Complete this activity to practice creating support to complete a partially written paragraph. After you are finished, check the answer key, but know that answers will vary widely.

In addition to understanding the 3 Es and anticipating reader questions, a final tactic to help you sufficiently support ideas in your writing is being specific. In this text, you will learn some ways to do this in your writing to bring it to life.

Watch this video and see how the examples that show the reader information instead of just telling them makes writing much more lively and interesting.

After reading the text and watching the video, practice using the tips you learned about making your writing more interesting and descriptive by doing the following activity. Note that there are no specific correct answers, but you can compare your responses to the answer key for some ideas.

Read this section to look at two paragraphs with similar content but many differences in depth and quality of the supporting ideas and details. Write your responses to the questions, then compare them to the answer key.

There are several "red flags" to be careful about in writing, and one of them is using words or phrases that are too general. Read this section for more information and examples of things to watch out for.

Understanding the relationships between main ideas and supporting details is an important part of writing effectively. Do the following activity to get some practice. When you are done, compare your answers to the answer key.

Read this section and complete the included activities, in which you identify the main ideas and supporting details of different paragraphs. When you are done, check your work against the answer key.

Do the following activity to get more practice organizing ideas and thinking about the relationships between general and specific ideas. When you are finished, compare your responses to the answer key to see if you are on the right track.

Read this section to learn about two common patterns of organization and how you might decide an order for your ideas in a piece of writing.

Once you have determined a pattern of organization for ideas, it is vital to connect them to create a sense of flow in your writing and make it easy for readers to follow what you are saying. Read this brief overview to learn about this important feature of good writing.

Read this article about connecting sentences within a paragraph in a meaningful way. Complete the practice activities, in which you will identify the relationships between ideas in a paragraph and practice developing a paragraph that connects ideas. You will continue to develop these skills throughout the course.

A primary way writers connect ideas is by using transitions. Read about different kinds of relationships and some transition words/phrases that can be used to demonstrate them in the following text.

Do this activity to practice thinking about relationships between ideas and using transitions to connect ideas and create stronger coherence in the two- and three-sentence passages.

Refer to this chart for more transitional words and expressions. Practice writing a paragraph explaining why transitions are important for effective communication. Try to use transitions from at least three categories listed on the chart when writing your paragraph.

Watch this video for an overview of the types of transitional words and phrases, including examples of when you might want to use each.

While transition words and phrases are a great way to connect and show relationships between ideas, they can get repetitive. Read this section to learn about another way to create stronger coherence in your writing. To better familiarize yourself with how authors show relationships between ideas, take a look at any published piece of writing (perhaps a book, a magazine, or even one of the segments from this course!) and see if you can identify content transitions and transition words that are used to connect the ideas.

Read about two key points to keep in mind before you learn more about sentence-level skills.

Read this to learn about what a sentence needs to be complete: a subject, a verb, and complete thought.

Get some practice identifying the parts of a sentence. After you have finished, check your answers against the answer key.

Now that you understand what a sentence needs to be complete, we can discuss how to avoid and fix incomplete sentences (called "fragments"). Read the following sections to learn about this common writing error.

Now that you know what fragments are and how to find them, this text will teach you how to correct them once you find them.

Get some practice finding and fixing fragments in these two activities. After you are finished, compare your answers to the answer keys.

Another type of error that must be avoided when you are constructing sentences is writing run-on sentences. Read this section to learn more about this error and how to identify it.

Now that you know how to identify a run-on sentence, read this section to learn how to correct this error when you find it.

Once you have learned how to fix a run-on once you find it, get some practice correcting run-on sentences by doing the following activities. When you are done, compare your answers to the answer key.

Read more about subordination and coordination and how they can not only fix run-ons but also help you show relationships between ideas, write smoother sentences, and vary the lengths and types of sentences you write. Then, practice using these techniques to improve a piece of writing in the activity. Compare your responses to the answer key after you have finished.

There are many rules governing punctuation, but using appropriate punctuation is about more than just following rules just for the sake of it. Rather, the rules for using punctuation act as a shared set of expectations between writers and readers. As a reader, you look to punctuation for signals about the author's intent. You will want to use punctuation appropriately to express your ideas as clearly as possible. In this way, punctuation is a tool that helps you inform, persuade, or entertain your audience. Watch this video for more information on different types of punctuation and the importance of correct spelling.

Punctuation is an important part of sentence skills. The comma has the widest variety of uses and is the most heavily used form of punctuation. Thus far, you have learned about basic sentence structure and how to avoid fragments and run-ons, and in particular, you learned one use of commas (to connect clauses). Read this section and do the included practice to learn about and get some practice with the many other uses of commas. When you finish, check your answers against the answer key.

Read this section to learn more about other common forms of punctuation and how to properly use them.

Read this section to learn about apostrophes, another important and multi-purpose punctuation. What you read here will connect to ideas you'll read about in the next section about confused words.

In addition to ensuring that your sentence structure and use of punctuation are correct and that you aren't writing fragments or run-ons, you also need to consider the specific words you use. The English language has a lot of words that sound alike but are spelled differently and have different meanings. It also has many words with very similar meanings that are easily mixed up. Read about these types of words and see a full glossary of their meanings and usage. Make sure to do the practice activity at the end.

According to the dictionary, "consistency" means "conformity in the application of something". This meaning aligns perfectly with how we will think of it in terms of writing. For our purposes, the "something" will be our use of language. Specifically, we will talk about consistency in three ways that it applies to writing: parallel sentence construction, verb tense, and point of view (pronouns). Consistency is important in good writing because it helps to make the job of the reader easy. To better understand these ideas, read about parallelism in the following section, and get some practice by doing the activity. When you are done, compare your answers to the answer key.

Read about a third consistency issue and get some practice by doing the activity. Compare your responses to the answer key.

Another consistency issue is regarding tense consistency. Read the following section and get some practice by doing the activity. When you are done, compare your responses to the answer key.

The final sentence skill we will talk about is diction, which means "word choice" or "use of words". As we work to be stronger writers, the words we use and how we put them together will be important in making the job of readers easy. We will discuss diction in terms of some word choices and word formations that should be avoided because they get in the way of good diction. Read this section and do the associated practice to learn about this type of diction error and get some practice fixing sentences with it.

Read and do the associated practice for wordiness to learn about this type of diction error and get some practice fixing sentences with it.

Read and do the associated practice for repetition to learn about two different types of repetition and get some practice fixing these types of errors.

Read this section to learn about three types of non-active wording that should be avoided to have quality and impactful diction and get some practice correcting sentences with these types of issues.

After learning about these types of diction problems and how to fix them, get some further practice revising sentences with more than one diction problem by doing this practice activity. When you are done, compare your answers to the answer key.

To get a better feeling of what a five-paragraph essay might look like, read this expansion about the Corner Store you read about earlier, and identify how it is different from the paragraph version.

Read this section to learn about what a thesis statement is, how to put one together, how it functions in an essay, and get some practice writing thesis statements.

After learning about how to write a thesis statement, get some practice by doing this activity. Answers will vary, but you can compare yours to the answer key when you are finished.

The first paragraph or series of paragraphs (in longer essays) of a multi-paragraph essay is the introduction. Introductions are very important because that is where you grab the readers' attention and get them interested in continuing to read. Think about what is happening in the "Corner Store" model essay in the introduction and read this section to learn about that and some common approaches to writing an introduction.

Get some practice writing introductions by doing this activity. There is no correct answer and many ways these could be written, but after you are done, you can compare your writing to the answer key.

The very last paragraph of a multi-paragraph essay is the conclusion. Conclusions are typically much easier to write than introductions and often tend to be short. Read this section to learn how to write this final piece of an essay.

Read this section to learn about some of the final considerations you need to make when writing a longer essay.

Read this model essay to see another example of how a five-paragraph essay is put together.

Do this activity to practice expanding a paragraph into a five-paragraph essay. There is no correct answer, but you can look at the sample response essay to see if you are on the right track.

After all this practice, now it's time to take that paragraph essay you wrote after doing the prewriting activity and work on improving using the information in Units 2–4 and expand it into a five-paragraph essay. Use the instructions in this section to help you in this process.

When you finish this writing, use this checklist to proofread and polish your work and ensure your essay is error-free.