Cover: Real Skills Essentials, 1st Edition by Miriam Moore; Susan Anker

Real Skills Essentials

First Edition ©2018 Miriam Moore; Susan Anker

Author Miriam Moore believes in helping students learn to trust themselves as readers, writers, and thinkers. Writing Essentials Online: A Macmillan Launchpad provides a space where students can build both confidence and strong academic writing skills that will carry the...

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ISBN:9781319153410

Cover: Real Skills Essentials, 1st Edition by Miriam Moore; Susan Anker

Get Miriam Moore’s advice for planning, drafting, and revising sentences and paragraphs—even when you aren’t online!

Author Miriam Moore believes in helping students learn to trust themselves as readers, writers, and thinkers. Writing Essentials Online: A Macmillan Launchpad provides a space where students can build both confidence and strong academic writing skills that will carry them forward in college and career.

A portable print text, Real Skills Essentials works together with Writing Essentials Online to deliver just the support necessary in order to develop sentences and paragraphs. It can be packaged with Writing Essentials Online at a significant discount.

Features

  • Convenient and Affordable Format. The essential advice and instruction for the sentence-to-paragraph level course in a brief, affordable, and portable format. Concise instructional content highlights what students need to know about sentences and paragraphs: the writing process, paragraph unity, patterns of development, cohesion, and the grammar needed for effective editing.

 

  • Four Basics Boxes. Presenting writing skills in manageable increments,these boxes break down the essentials of topics such as revision, good paragraphs, and illustration into four basic principles. The Four Basics approach to complex composition topics helps students target, remember, and apply concepts without feeling overwhelmed by them.

 

  • Guided Practice. Scaffolding supports the development of writing practice throughout Real Skills Essentials. Students practice writing first within partially completed templates, which allow them to concentrate on specific features of composition such as identification of major supporting details. As a second step, students expand their skills by completing a guided outline, taking more control over the writing process. Finally, students work through the entire writing process independently.

 

  • Real-World Examples. Samples of real student writing demonstrate the concepts covered and give students confidence that good writing skills are relevant and achievable. A focus on real-life correspondence, such as e-mails and cover letters, helps students connect writing to their everyday lives.

 

  • Focus on the Four Most Serious Errors. Real Skills Essentials concentrates first on the four types of grammatical errors that matter most: fragments, run-ons, errors in subject-verb agreement, and errors of verb tense and form. Once students master these four topics and start building their editing skills, they are better prepared to tackle the grammar errors treated in later chapters.Checklists. Checklists throughout the text help novice writers know when a piece of writing is finished and ready for submission or distribution to a real-world audience.

 

  • Checklists. Checklists throughout the text help novice writers know when a piece of writing is finished and ready for submission or distribution to a real-world audience.

New to This Edition

Digital Options

Table of Contents

A Note to Students
Preface for Instructors
PART ONE: College Thinking, Reading, and Writing
1. Reading and Critical Thinking: Keys to Successful Writing
2. Getting ready to Write: Writing in College and Other Formal Settings
PART TWO: Writing Paragraphs and Essays
3. Writing Your Paragraph: How to Put ideas Together
4. Improving Your Paragraph: How to Make It the Best It Can Be
5. Developing Your Paragraph: Different Ways to Present Your Ideas
6. Moving from Paragraphs to Essays: How to Write Longer Papers
PART THREE: Grammar, Punctuation, and Mechanics
7. The Parts of Speech: A Brief Review
8. Complete Sentences: Key Parts to Know
9. Fragments: Sentences That Are Missing a Key Part
10. Run-Ons and Comma Splices: Two Sentences Joined Incorrectly
11. Subject-Verb Agreement Problems: Subjects and Verbs That Do Not Match
12. Verb-Tense Problems: The Past Tense and the Past Participle
13. Other Grammar Concerns: Problems with Pronouns and Modifiers
14. Style, Word Choice, and Spelling: Writing Effective Sentences
15. Punctuation and Capitalization
Index
Useful Editing and Proofreading Marks
Headshot of Miriam Moore

Miriam Moore

Miriam Moore is Assistant Professor of English at the University of North Georgia. She teaches undergraduate linguistics and grammar courses, developmental English courses (integrated reading and writing), ESL composition and pedagogy, and the first-year composition sequence. She is the co-author with Susan Anker of Real Essays, Real Writing, Real Reading and Writing, and Writing Essentials Online. She has over 20 years’ experience in community college teaching as well. Her interests include applied linguistics, writing about writing approaches to composition, professionalism for two-year college English faculty, and threshold concepts for composition, reading, and grammar.

Headshot of Susan Anker

Susan Anker

Susan Anker (BA, MEd, Boston University) brings a unique perspective to the teaching of the developmental writing course. She taught English and developmental writing before entering college publishing, where she worked for eighteen years: as a sales representative and English/ESL editor at Macmillan Publishing Company; as developmental English/ESL editor, executive editor, and editor in chief at St. Martin’s Press; and as vice president and editor in chief for humanities at Houghton Mifflin Company. In each of these positions, she worked with developmental writing instructors and students, maintaining her early interest in the field.  Since the publication of the first edition of Real Writing in 1998, Anker has traveled extensively to campuses across the country, continuing her conversations with instructors and students and giving workshops and presentations. She believes that the writing course is, for many students, their first, best opportunity to learn the skills they will need to succeed in college and achieve their goals.

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Program Resources

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Instructor's Manual for Real Essays Essentials (Online Only)

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Instructor's Manual for Real Skills Essentials (Online Only)

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Instructor's Manual for Real Writing Essentials (Online Only)