Real Skills Essentials

Become a stronger reader, writer, and thinker as Real Skills Essentials gives you confidence in your academic writing skills through added support developing stronger sentences and paragraphs.

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