Hello!  Thanks for working hard on last week's assignments.  If you were surprised by the amount of time it took you to complete them, just remember that a "traditional" college course meets 3 hours a week during a regular semester.  Besides the 3 hours of actual classroom time, college students are often told they should expect to put in an extra hour or two a week outside of class to prepare for each hour in class.  Therefore, you shouldn't be alarmed if this online course requires 3 or more hours of your time each week.  But remember, your time will be worth it when you pass the TASP Writing Test and enter College Composition I and other college courses with solid writing and grammar skills and with confidence!

Grammar - due by midnight Wednesday

Last week we focused on words, the building blocks of sentences.  This week we progress to studying simple sentences.  You will learn what subjects, verbs, and prepositional phrases are and how to spot them in sentences.  You're probably already familiar with these parts of sentences, but take the time to review these important basics.  Believe me, you'll be glad you did later in the course!

1. Read Chapter 23, "The Simple Sentence."  Do Practice 1, 2, 3, and 4 in your textbook to enhance your comprehension of the chapter.  You do not need to e-mail me your answers.

2. Read more about subjects, verbs, and prepositions here.

3. Complete Assignment 3: Subjects, Verbs, Prepositions Mastery Test and e-mail it to 0302race@spc.cc.tx.us by midnight Wednesday.  Put "Assignment 3" in the subject line.
 

  Writing - due by midnight Sunday

This week we begin a study of the basic paragraph.  You will learn what a paragraph is and what a topic sentence is.  You will also learn that effective paragraphs have unity and contain excellent support.  If you propose a single point and stick to that point, your paragraph will have unity.  If you support the point with specific evidence, your paper will have support.

1. Read Chapter 3, "The Process of Writing Paragraphs."  Do the following exercises in your textbook to prepare you for Assignment 4, but you do not need to e-mail them to me.

Notice the advice on page 27: Don't create topic sentences that start like this--"This paragraph will be about . . ." or "In this paper, I will write about . . ."  Those are considered weak paragraph openers.

• Practice 1, page 21.
• Practice 2, page 22.
• Practice 6, page 29.
• Practice 12, page 36.

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