UNIT ONE: CREATING EFFECTIVE SENTENCES
In this unit, we learn how to construct good sentences, your most basic tool as you seek to communicate your thoughts clearly.
We make sure we understand the basic parts of speech.
We review how these individual parts of speech form phrases and clauses to help you express more complex thoughts.
We examine basic sentence patterns and learn how to employ effective subordination and co-ordination.
We explore the possibilities offered by parallelism.
Please note that sometimes I will mention topics that are explored in later tutorials. If you need to, please don’t hesitate to check the menu, find the term that you don’t understand, jump ahead to that tutorial, read up, then return to where you were.
In Unit One, Tutorials 1 through 24 explain parts of speech. Tutorials 25 through 31 define phrases and clauses. We’ll review typical sentence patterns, subordination, and coordination in Tutorial 32 through 42. Tutorial 43, discusses parallelism. And finally, in Tutorials 44 and 45, we’ll look at some common sentence errors.
In this unit, we explore how you can use individual words to maximum advantage in your sentences.
Usually, it is best to remember these points when revising your first draft. REVISION IS THE MOST IMPORTANT PART OF WRITING!!
In Tutorials 46 to 49, we look at how you can avoid wordiness, which can sometimes cause confusion for your readers and reduces effective communication.
In Tutorials 50 to 53, we examine using appropriate language for academic writing.
In Tutorial 54 through 56, we discuss using exact language.
Punctuation is a great tool to express precisely what you mean. Consider these two sentences:
Will that taxi ever arrive?
Will that taxi ever arrive!Which sentence expresses more frustration? Is that what you want?
In this Unit, we explore end punctuation (Tutorials 57-59), commas (Tutorials 60-69), semicolons (Tutorials 70 and 71), colons (Tutorials 72-75), apostrophes (Tutorials 76-79), quotation marks (Tutorials 80-86), and assorted other punctuation marks (Tutorials 87-91).
UNIT FOUR: PARAGRAPHS AND ESSAYS
It is important to remember that your course instructors will tell you what they expect in your assignments, and that is the final word as far as your classes are concerned.
In this unit, I suggest nine ways you can develop the thesis of your paragraphs and essays (Tutorials 92-101).
As well, we review the component parts that are necessary in every paragraph and essay—if, that is, you want it to be effective! These are Tutorials 102-104).
Please remember that you have an excellent writing resource on campus. The TRU Writing Centre is located in OM 2674; you can book a 30-minute appointment at 250-371-5689 or email it at writing_ctr@tru.ca. Or you can follow the Centre @TRUWriting.
Dr. Kathleen Scherf