PART ONE BASIC WRITING SKILLS I. COURSE OUTLINE 1.1 Goals 1.2 Course Requirements and Marks 1.3 Diagnostic Test 1.3.1 Pretest 1.3.2 Posttest II. Mechanics 2.1 Capitalization 2.2 Punctuation Marks 2.2.1 The Full Stop (.) 2.2.2 The Comma (,) 2.2.3 The Hypen ( - ) 2.2.4 The Semicolon (;) 2.2.5 The Colon (:) 2.2.6 The Dash (--) 2.2.7 The Quotation Marks ( ) 2.2.8 The Ellipsis (...) 2.2.9 The Apostrophe (') 2.2.10 The Slash ( / ) 2.2.11 Brackets/Parenthesis [ ] / ( ) 2.2.12 The Question Mark (?) 2.2.13 Exclamation Mark/Point (!) 2.3 Spelling 2.4 Paragraph Styles 2.5 Handwriting III. Word Choice 3.1 Levels of Usage 3. I. 1 The Formal Usage 3.1.2 The Informal or Colloquial Usage 3. 1.3 Vulgar or Slang Usage 3.2 Word Meanings 3.2.1 Denotation 3.2.2 Connotation 3.2.3 Contextual Meaning 3.2.4 Other Meanings IV. Grammar 4.1 Sentence and its Parts 4.1.1 Subject 4.1.2 Predicate 4.1.3 Fragment 4.1.4 Requirements of Written Sentence 4.1.5 Kinds of Sentences 4.2 Subject-Verb Agreement 4.2.1 Rules on Subject-Verb Agreement 4.2.2 Exceptions to the Rules 4.3 Phrases and Clauses 4.3.1 Phrases 4.3.2 Clauses 4.4 Sentence Errors PART TWO METHODS OF PARAGRAPH DEVELOPMENT I. Definition 1.1 Paragraph by Definition 1.2 Model One 1.3 Model Two 1.3.1 Informal definition 1.3.2 Formal definition 1.4 Model Three 1.5 Model Four …… PART THREE ESSAY WRITING Answer Keys Works Cited