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Mechanics of writing I: Course Outline GC-101

Mechanics refers to the rules of the written language, such as capitalization, punctuation and spelling. An understanding of both grammar and mechanics is required to clearly communicate your ideas in a paper.

Objective

 

  1. To strengthen the foundation of English language.
  2. To develop the student’s vocabulary.
  3. To train them in building paragraphs.
  4. To provide them other writing skills such as sequencing, comparison & contrast, cause-effect relation, cohesive devices etc.

Course Contents

Unit-I

  • How to use a dictionary?

Unit-II

  • Basic rules of English grammar
  • Parts of speech: Their function and use in all the four skills
  • Tenses: How they are made and used.

Unit-III

  • Conditional Sentences: How they are made; their variety and usage.
  • The use of prepositions.
  • Direct-Indirect Narration: How the different sentences-assertive, interrogative, optative and exclamatory-are changed into indirect and vice versa.

Unit-IV

  • Use of Articles.
  • Subject-verb agreement rules.
  • Note: Teaching of the above grammatical rules should be followed by exercises on each of these items to test whether the students have a clear concept or not.

Unit-V

  • Vocabulary development:

Unit-VI

  • Paragraph building:

As a first step in this direction, the student should be taught how a paragraph is developed. How a topic sentence is made. How the sequence of thought should be maintained. How the arguments should be marshaled in a logical and convincing manner.

Unit-VII

  • Sequencing; Comparison and contrast.

Unit-VIII

  • Cause-effect relations.
  • Cohesive devices.   

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