This is one of the most important courses that you are going to do in your UG Programme. Because it will teach major skills that are connected with writing in both academic and professional life or the workplace. It helps you to build the foundation for good writing skills and equips you with major tools that can be used for improving your writing skills. This course consists of 3 blocks and has 11 units. It is awarded 4 credits.
BLOCK 01 Improving Basics
Block 01 discusses the most important prerequisites of becoming a writer. To become an ideal writer we have to develop critical, analytical, and interpretive skills. Apart from this, vocabulary is also an important one. Vocabulary alone cannot do the thing. Improvement of grammar and punctuation marks is also an integral part of writing.
Therefore, Unit 1 Developing Critical, Analytical, and Interpretive Writing Skills help you to process all these factors.
Unit 2 Enhancing Vocabulary, discusses different strategies to enhance and improve your vocabulary.
Unit 3 Improving Grammar and Punctuation Skills revises some areas of grammar and punctuation which students find a bit problematic. These are tools to make you a good writer.
Now let us have a discussion on BLOCK 1. This block consists of three units. The first unit, Developing Critical, Analytical, and Interpretive Writing Skills talks about three skills or strategies for enhancing three writing skills- Critical thinking, Analytical Skills, and Interpretive Skills.
Unit 2, Enhancing Vocabulary, discusses various strategies that can be used for improving your vocabulary. Increase both active and passive vocabulary. Gradually convert passive vocabulary to active vocabulary. Content words and function words also have a significant role in writing skills. Judiciously use both of them.
Then this unit explains some difficulties in learning English like homophones, homographs, homonyms, etc
After the difficulties in the English language, Unit 1 discusses word-building techniques or word formation techniques- Affixation and Compounding.
Finally, the unit discusses the last strategy to improve vocabulary, which is the use of dictionaries and Thesaurus.
Unit 3, Improving Grammar and Punctuation marks, discusses its first part two terms- Forms and functions in language.
Form means the structure of sentences that we used in declarative, interrogative, imperative, and exclamatory sentences. The structure of a sentence is determined by grammatical rules and regulations. For example, the structure of a simple sentence is prescribed by grammatical rules and regulations.
Language Function means the purpose of using a language. Purpose of language can be various types:
- Informative Function
- Expressive Function.
- Directive Function
After the function of language, Unit 3 talks about, the tenses of the English language and give examples of sentences from the important tenses. Apart from this, this unit also looks at some of the difficult areas that are usually faced by non-native speakers, like conditional clauses and passive construction. The last part of the Unit highlights some rules that are connected with punctuation marks.