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.
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
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.
