Real Skills Essentials by Miriam Moore; Susan Anker - First Edition, 2018 from Macmillan Student Store

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...

Read more
Students - Buy or Rent
Real Skills Essentials by Miriam Moore; Susan Anker - First Edition, 2018 from Macmillan Student Store

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

LAUNCHPAD_FULL icon

Launchpad

Get the e-book, do assignments, take quizzes, prepare for exams and more, to help you achieve success in class.

Schedule Launchpad Demo

EPUB3_EBOOK icon

E-book

Read online (or offline) with all the highlighting and notetaking tools you need to be successful in this course.

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

Miriam Moore

Miriam Moore (BA, Baylor University; MA, PhD, University of South Carolina) discovered her passion for teaching over 20 years ago when, as a graduate student, she worked with ESL writers in a sheltered section of first-year composition.  Since then, she has taught in a state university, an intensive English program, an industry-sponsored ESL program, and two community colleges.  Whether teaching developmental writing, literacy, ESL grammar, reading, or first-year composition, her focus is the same:  to introduce students to academic culture and provide instruction that will help them succeed in their academic programs.  She is currently professor of English and ESL at Lord Fairfax Community College in Middletown, Virginia, where she is developing an expanded ESL program and leading the College’s implementation of the Virginia Community College System (VCCS) redesign of development English.  In 2011-2012, she served on the team which developed the integrated curriculum for the VCCS redesign, and she has presented strategies for teaching developmental and ESL courses at local, state, regional, and national conferences.

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.

Instructor Resources

Need instructor resources for your course?

1. Sign in to unlock your resources.   |   2. Select your resources.  |   3. Submit a request.  |   4. Download your resources.

Unlock Your Resources

Instructor Resources

request locked icon

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

request locked icon

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

request locked icon

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