Skill Set: Developing Reading and Writing Skills

Skills Set: Developing Reading and Writing Skills is a developmental composition text aimed primarily at English courses for college students who need to improve their skill levels to the point where they can handle first year college English.

Table of Contents:
Unit 1: Writing Skills Addressing audience and purpose The Principles of good writing Writing personally and impersonally Using appropriate style Understanding the use of you Understanding the writing process Unit 2: Vocabulary Skills Recognizing parts of speech Using dictionaries Mastering spelling Recognizing roots and affixes Recognizing collocation Understanding connotation Using synonyms and antonyms Understanding idioms Using jargon Recognizing colloquialisms and slang Studying vocabulary Unit 3: Sentence Writing Skills Understanding basic sentence structure Understanding verb forms Using active and passive Showing singular and plural Showing possession Using prepositional phrases Using co-ordinate conjunctions Writing noun clauses Writing adjective clauses Writing adverb clauses Using participles and gerunds Building sentences with prepositional phrases Reducing clauses to phrases Combining sentences Recognizing fragments and run-on sentences Using punctuation and capitalization Unit 4: Paragraph Writing Skills Independent paragraphs Writing topic sentences Making points Supporting points Writing concluding sentences Achieving Unity Using Transition signals Achieving coherence Sample paragraphs Unit 5: Essay Writing Skills Understanding essay structure Planning an essay Writing an outline Writing a thesis statement Writing an introduction Writing body paragraphs Writing a conclusion Practicing essay writing Sample essays Unit 6: Rhetorical Skills Illustrating Narrating Describing Defining and classifying Showing cause and effect Reviewing Describing process Making comparisons Persuading Unit 7: Editing and Proofreading Vocabulary errors Correct grammar errors Correcting punctuation and capitalization Editing to improve style Unit 8: Reading Skills Distinguishing fiction and non-fiction Identifying the main idea Distinguishing writers' opinions Recognizing writers' techniques Dealing with unfamiliar words Researching and referencing Avoiding plagiarism Paraphrasing Quoting and using reported speech Writing a summary Answering reading comprehension questions Building reading skills Reading Selection Non Fiction Readings Sherri Beattie: "All grown up and still in tow" Jo Pavlov: "Survive squalor and learn to tidy" Karen von Hahn: "Helpless" Mickey Vallee: "Podless and happy to be that way" Christopher Hutsul: "Disconnecting hard to do, cellphone generation finds" Margaret Wente: "Free to drive" Letters to the editor: "Was court right to back suits against big tobacco?": Linda McQuaig: "Pro: Ruling rightly blames adults for teen addictions" Rondi Anderson: "Con: Do we really want private decisions regulated?" Jim Coyle: "No point fearing attacks we can't stop" Sidney Katz: "The strange forces behind the Richard hockey riots" Lorne Tepperman: "Appearance: Its social meaning" Fiction Readings Garry Engkent: "Why my mother can't speak English" Saki (H.H. Munro): "The open window" Urs Frei: "Soap and water" L.M. Montgomery: "A tempest in the school teapot" Sara McDonald: "The squatter" Appendices Following format guidelines Writing e-mail Making oral presentations Answer Key

About the Author :
Lucia Engkent has taught English and written textbooks for over twenty years. She has an M.A. in Linguistics Applied to Second Language Teaching from the University of Ottawa, as well as an M.A. in Library and Information Science from the University of Toronto. For ESL she has written Take Part: Speaking Canadian English (Prentice Hall) and Take Charge: Using Everyday Canadian English (Prentice Hall). Lucia Engkent has also co-authored two English textbooks with her husband, Garry Engkent: Groundwork: Writing Skills to Build On (Prentice Hall) and Fiction/Non-Fiction: a Reader and Rhetoric (Thomson Nelson). She currently teaches at Seneca College in Toronto and Renison College at the University of Waterloo.