Overview
Do you think of grammar as a set of rules that other people know but you don’t or that you have forgotten somewhere between grade school and now? Do you find yourself spending time second guessing yourself about whether a word or sentence is correct? Do you get mystifying feedback that tells you it isn’t? Do you go by what “sounds right” only to find that it doesn’t always match what other people consider right?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, this course can help you save time or worry. Revealing what you already know about grammar (which might be much more than you think), the course sets out the basics of how a sentence works technically. This knowledge, which is neither difficult nor boring, will give you a reliable strategy you can apply to any sentence. You can use it to find and fix errors, trust to your skill instead of your ear, and even improve your writing style. You will develop confidence that your writing is free of basic grammatical errors that interfere with your meaning or generate negative feedback. You will also leave the course with the foundation you need to tackle even the trickiest grammar and punctuation problems.
Are you unsure whether you need this course? If you can already do these things, consider taking Advanced Writing Mechanics instead:
- Distinguish between a sentence and a fragment
- Find the subject and verb in a sentence
- Identify errors of agreement between the subject and verb
- Choose the grammatically correct word (e.g. pronouns, verbs, prepositions)
- Identify basic errors of punctuation
If you want to check that you can do these things, you can take an assessment test. There are five sections with five questions in each, and it takes approximately 15 minutes. You will receive a score and a recommendation for which course to take.
Grammar Demystified assessment test