Do you struggle with punctuation, spelling, capitalization and logical sequencing of sentences? Then this workshop is for you.
This course will introduce you to the fundamentals of writing in English, including grammar, vocabulary, sentence structure, punctuation and paragraph construction. Through lively explanations, an authoritative manual and interesting sample questions and exercises, this workshop will enable you to improve your standard of writing.
The key to getting better at writing is practice. This is a hands-on and lively course in which there will be many opportunities to practice and improve your writing skills. In addition, the instructor will be happy to review samples of your written work and provide feedback.
Program content
Spelling
- General principles of spelling in English
- The one hundred most commonly misspelled English words
Punctuation and Capitalization
- Subject, verb, object– grasping the structure of English sentences
- “FANBOYS — for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so”
- Commas and coordinating conjunctions
- Simple rules for using colons and semicolons
- Special rules for punctuation in quotations
- Is it ‘The president’ or ‘The President’? Understanding proper nouns
Grammar
- Subject-verb agreement
- Special problems: uncountable nouns
- Special problems: when the subject is a verb
- “The government is…” or “The government are …”? Special problems with group nouns
- “There is a problem and a solution” or “There are a problem and a solution”? Special problems in impersonal sentences
Sentence sequencing
- Advancing the argument: understanding why we write in paragraphs
- The types of logical relationships between sentences
Vocabulary
- Antonyms and synonyms
- The one hundred most common synonym pairs
- The one hundred most common antonym pairs
Learning objectives
- Spell the hundred most commonly misspelled words in English
- Use English punctuation
- Understand when to capitalize words
- Make subjects agree with verbs
- Identify the logical relationship between sentences and sequence them effectively
- Identify synonymous and antonymous English words
Who Should Attend
Anyone who wants to review the fundamentals of writing in English, understand the rules of grammar and improve writing skills.Note – this workshop can also be used in preparation for writing competency testing, such as the Level 3 of the Public Service Exam ( WSE-MCT Test )