1. Your Strengths as a Writer.

2. The Bases of Good Writing:   The Four Cs.

3. Overview of Paragraph Writing Skills.

4. Essay Overview.

5. Writing Process Overview.

II. WRITING EFFECTIVE SENTENCES.

6. Grammar Overview.

Grammar diagnostic test.

Skills Group 1: Basic Sentence Structure.

7. Prepositional Phrases.

8. Subjects and Verbs.

9. Clauses.

10. Run-On Sentences.

11. Fragments.

12. Sentence Combining 1.

Skills Group 2: Verbs and Pronouns.

13. Regular Verbs.

14. Irregular Verbs.

15. Subject-Verb Agreement.

16. Verb Tense and Tense Consistency.

17. Pronoun Types.

18. Pronoun Agreement, Pronoun Reference, and Point of View.

19. Sentence Combining 2.

Skills Group 3: Adjectives, Adverbs, and Parallelism.

20. Simple Modifiers: Adjectives and Adverbs.

21. Misplaced Modifiers.

22. Dangling Modifiers.

23. Errors in Parallelism.

24. Sentence Combining 3.

25. Punctuation and Mechanics Overview.

Punctuation and Mechanics Diagnostic Test

Skills Group 4: Punctuation and Mechanics.

26. Periods, Question Marks, and Exclamation Marks.

27. Commas.

28. Apostrophes.

29. Quotation Marks.

30. Other Punctuation Marks: Colons and Semi-colons, Parentheses, Dashes,

and Hyphens.

31. Capitalization.

32. Numbers and Abbreviations.

33. Formal Writing Format.

34. Sentence Combining 4.

Skills Group 5: Word Choice.

35. Using the Dictionary.

36. Spelling Well.

37. Words that Look Alike and Sound Alike.

38. Choosing the Best Words.

39. Sensitive Language.

40. Proofing and Polishing (omitted words, incorrect word forms, editing tips).

III. MASTERY TESTS: PRACTICE WRITING EFFECTIVE SENTENCES.

Mastery Test 1: Basic sentence structure.

Mastery Test 2: Verbs and pronouns.

Mastery Test 3: Adjectives, adverbs, and parallelism.

Mastery Test 4: Punctuation and mechanics.

Mastery Test 5: Word choice.

IV. READINGS.

Choices We Make.

“How Do I Love Thee,” Robert J. Trotter.

“What You Do Is What You Are,” Nickie McWhirter.

“Saturday Night and You’re All Alone?   Maybe You Need a Cyberdate,” Beth Brophy.

“In Defense of Splitting Up,” Barbara Ehrenreich – Time magazine.

“Oprah on ‘the fire for reading"’ at the AAP,” Oprah Winfrey.

Focusing on the Family.

“The Family Farm,” David Mas Masumoto.

“Guilt,” Phillip Persky.

“The Case Against Chores,” Jane Smiley.

“Generations,” Joyce Maynard.

“Hold the Mayonnaise,” Julia Alvarez.

In The News.

“Dawn’s Early Light,” Richard Rodriguez.

“Screaming for Civility,” Bob Morris.

“Mogul vs. Mavericks: A Search for Heroes,” William C. Taylor.

“Overworked ethic ; Long hours combined with too few vacation days are taking their

toll on Americans,” -- John Allen.

“Diagnosis: Supersize,” by Howard Markel.  

Lab Manual.

Appendices.

ESL Issues.

Working Together:   Improving Yourself (peer collaboration guidelines, goal sheet).

Skills Improvement Exam.

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