Course Name

Communicate With Confidence

Contact Hours: 12

Course Description

Don`t know where to put that apostrophe? Bamboozled by "who" and "whom"? It`s hard to communicate with confidence when you`re uncertain about the rules of English grammar. Here`s an easy and fun way to learn. Packed with fun explanations, examples, and memory devices, this course will teach you the crucial aspects of grammar. Four lessons get right to the point, targeting the most common real-life misunderstandings and mistakes that regularly surface in the workplace and at home. The course will help you reverse bad habits and ingrained mistakes -- and enable you to communicate with confidence!

Outcome

Upon completion of this course, students will be able to: Distinguish between the various parts of speech including nouns, verbs, adverbs, and adjectives. Differentiate a complete sentence from a sentence fragment. Identify direct and indirect objects and distinguish between active and passive voice in written communication. Determine proper pronoun usage ("I" or "me," "who" or "whom"). Identify and correct misplaced modifiers. Choose proper punctuation. Differentiate between the plural and possessive usage. Choose correct words to express themselves more accurately. Use memory tricks and devices to remember what they have learned.

Assessment

After each lesson, students will take a multiple-choice quiz. After the final lesson, students will take a multiple-choice exam.

Outline

Week One: The fundamentals Our goal of the first week is to revisit the basics. You'll review the parts of speech, focusing on the essential role of each, and learn how they relate to one another. Then you'll learn how these various parts combine to make a complete sentence. The lesson demystifies confusing terminology with some clear, simple definitions. Week Two: Sentence structure Using what you've learned from lesson one, you'll be able to dissect parts of a sentence and understand their proper functions. This time we'll hash out pronoun problems ("I" vs. "me"; "who" vs. "whom") and learn how to keep modifiers from dangling. Week Three: Proper Usage Now that you know how to organize your sentences, it's time to learn how to put them together. In week three, we'll review the proper usage of periods, commas, apostrophes, semicolons, colons, dashes, hyphens, and parentheses. You'll understand the functions of these punctuation marks, and when (and when not) to use them. Then we'll target three common problems: plural vs. possessive, comma splices, and improper use of the semicolon. Week Four: Problem words Week four is about diction -- the word choices we make. We'll pinpoint troublesome words and expressions that have weaseled their way into common usage. We'll also review most common misspelled and misappropriated words (such as affect/effect and fewer/less). Focused explicitly on today's most common misuses and mistakes, this lesson will help you leave muddy language behind and communicate with greater accuracy.