Writing Essentials

Details

Master the essentials of writing, and become the stellar wordsmith you always wanted to be! In this course, you'll develop the skills you need to excel at business communications, express yourself clearly online, and take your creative literary talents to a new level.

Whether you're hoping to get a better job, write for a blog, or publish your short story, this course will give you the writing tools you need for success. It's also a perfect choice if you speak English as a second language. With the knowledge and hands-on practice you gain from this course, you'll be able to express yourself clearly and persuasively in writing—both in your personal life and in the business world.

Enrollment Options:

Instructor-Led
6 Weeks Access Course Code: wre
Start Dates* Mar 13 | Apr 17 | May 15 | Jun 19
*Choose start date in cart

$129.99

USD

Enroll before 28th February and get high quality lamination on your hardcopy certificate absolutely free! Use your certificate to your advantage by showing your certified credentials to prospective employers and recruiters.

Syllabus

Writing: Your Dynamic New Tool

Welcome to Lesson 1, where you'll learn important concepts to help improve your writing. You'll learn a strategy that will free up every bit of your existing writing skills and help you gain confidence when you write. Practice begins now with a new technique that will help you get your thoughts out onto the page so you can work with them. It's a great way to start on your goal of becoming a confident, accomplished writer. Whether you need to write on the job or you're eager to write for publication, this lesson will help!

Words: Picking the Right One

Prepare yourself for some major upgrades on your ability to choose effective words! In this lesson you'll learn to recognize what kinds of word choices work and why. You'll come away with an understanding about word choices that cause your readers to feel confused or uninterested. You'll have the pleasure of discovering how to find the word you want and also how to goof around with words so you enjoy writing more. Finally, you'll practice, practice, practice. It's fun, so feel free to dive in and splash around!

Spelling: Tips and Practice

It's time for spelling practice. Not only will you review problem words, but you'll get acquainted with 10 helpful rules and five helpful tips to make you a better speller so you can spell better from now on. You'll identify your own particular spelling demons and learn a strategy to cope with them once and for all. This lesson is filled with the kinds of resources and spelling practice you've been looking for.

Usage: Which Word Goes Where

Here's your chance to get acquainted with common word usage difficulties and master them. You're about to learn to pick the right word at the right time and put it in the right place in your sentence. You'll practice choosing between similar sounding words that have different meanings and get helpful explanations about the tricky usages that trip you up daily. By the end of this information-packed lesson, you'll be much better at picking the correct words.

Sentences: Writing Them Effectively

In Lesson 5, you'll integrate all that you've learned so far—how to capture your thoughts, choose effective words, spell correctly, and master word usage—by mastering techniques that will help you write effective sentences. Here you'll practice constructing sentences that have energy and precision by learning four simple tips, deciding which words to take out, and communicating your ideas logically.

Ending Punctuation: When, Where, and Why

Whisk through a handy review of the three main punctuation marks used to end sentences: the period, the question mark, and the exclamation point. But that's not all. You'll benefit from practicing how to identify and fix run-on sentences, sentence fragments, and the overuse of dashes and ellipses. Round out your exploration with the challenge of combining quotation marks with the ending marks. You'll get a fine update on what works and what doesn't with this first of three full lessons on punctuation.

Commas: Mastery at Last!

Commas! Yes, you can master their use. Lesson 7 is designed to give you confidence in your comma placement. You'll learn how to use commas to create energy and precision in your writing. Instead of memorizing an intimidating list of rules, you'll learn by listening, clarifying, and practicing. You'll realize that you're in charge of your commas rather than being a passive victim. You'll get answers to all your lingering doubts about using commas here.

Semicolons, Colons, and All the Rest: A Quick Review

It's likely been a long time since your school days, and your knowledge of the correct use of all the punctuation marks may be a bit vague now. Lesson 8 to the rescue! The emphasis here will be on how to use punctuation marks like semicolons, colons, dashes, parentheses, ellipses, apostrophes, quotation marks, italics, and hyphens. You'll acquire a new understanding of the way these marks help you. You'll gain this understanding by discovering, through practice, how to punctuate for clarity and how to help your readers hear the way you want your words to sound.

Paragraphs: How They Help You Communicate

You're building your knowledge brick by brick, and now it's time to tackle the most powerful organizing tool of all writing—the paragraph. Here you'll find tips on how to organize a paragraph, where to break one paragraph and start another, and how to sequence paragraphs for optimum understanding. As always, you'll get to practice these skills as you go, solidifying your knowledge and gaining new confidence. Dive in!

Formatting: Tools and Tips to Help Your Content Shine

Now it's time to find out how to put your writing into the right format so that you can communicate with power and precision. Formatting appeals to the eye of your readers and draws them into your content. It's a powerful tool and one that involves some creative choices on your part. Get ready to learn about your choices for overall form, as well as how to use basic and specific formatting tools to make your writing highly readable.

Writing for Electronic Media: Quirks and Characteristics

Learn how to write effectively in today's electronic world. Explore how the techniques of writing various types of electronic media such as email, instant messages, and text messages, for example, differ from the techniques used to prepare messages that will be read on paper. It's a new world, and new rules are necessary to help you communicate well. This lesson will help you discover what works and what doesn't in these exciting and evolving media. You'll gain a new understanding of how to write powerful email, since it's the most common of all electronic message systems.

Putting It All Together: Writing Well!

Time to wrap up all you've learned! Lesson 12 will help you practice using your new skills, working from freewriting to a finished document. You'll practice how to use both your creative and your critical skills while writing. You'll find out what kind of attitude will help you use your new skills and what good habits will help you continue to improve each time you write. You'll focus on revision, work with a revision checklist, and review good tips on proofreading. Finally, you'll put together all the new things you've learned so that your writing will continue to improve over time.

Requirements

Hardware Requirements:

  • This course can be taken on either a PC or Mac.

Software Requirements:

  • PC: Windows 8 or newer.
  • Mac: OS X Snow Leopard 10.6 or later.
  • Browser: The latest version of Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox are preferred. Microsoft Edge and Safari are also compatible.

Other:

  • Email capabilities and access to a personal email account.

Prerequisites

There are no prerequisites to take this course.

Instructor

Ann Linquist is a continuing education instructor on college campuses, at corporations, and with non-profit organizations. She has helped thousands of adults learn to tackle their writing tasks with enthusiasm. Having written everything from novels to newsletters, articles to ad copy, Linquist is able to address the writing needs of each individual. The breadth of her background ensures a powerful, involving learning experience that builds on the strengths of each participant.

Reviews

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ExpertRating is an ISO 9001:2015 certified company, which reflects that our courses and tests conform to the highest international quality standards. Our training material is prepared by thorough professionals with years of experience, and goes through several rounds of analysis by expert teams to help develop well-balanced, comprehensive and meaningful content.