LoyalistLibrary: English Communication: Reading and Writing

Selected Online Resources: English Communication

Editing and Proofreading (The Learning Portal)
"It is important to look critically at what you have written and make sure that you are expressing your ideas clearly. Remember the reader when you are reviewing your own work. Edit the spelling and grammar and proofread to catch remaining errors and polish the writing. It makes a big difference." -- website
English Writing Skills (from EnglishClub.com)
"Welcome to EnglishClub Writing for ESL learners, to help you learn and practise the skill of writing in English." -- website
Planning Your Writing (The Learning Portal)
"Planning is the first stage in writing. Your plan is the foundation that your writing is built on. Planning your writing involves first understanding the assignment, then brainstorming ideas, and finally, organizing your thoughts in a structured form." -- website
Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL)
The Online Writing Lab (OWL) at Purdue University houses writing resources and instructional material, and we provide these as a free service of the Writing Lab at Purdue. Students, members of the community, and users worldwide will find information to assist with many writing projects. Teachers and trainers may use this material for in-class and out-of-class instruction.
Purdue Writing Lab for ESL Instructors and Students
This page provides resources for ESL instructors and students.
Structuring Your Writing (The Learning Portal)
"In college, most of our writing is to inform, explain to or persuade the reader. You will also need to structure your writing into paragraphs in a form that help to inform, explain or persuade. In any type of writing, you will likely need to incorporate someone else's ideas. If you use someone else's ideas, you will need to use those ideas as sources and cite them." -- website

English Reading Skills (from EnglishClub.com)
"Welcome to EnglishClub Reading for ESL learners, to help you learn and practise the skill of reading English." -- website
Reading & Note-taking (The Learning Portal)
"In a college program there is a lot of material to learn and understand. Whether you are trying to absorb information in class or trying to understand the material in your textbook, study techniques can make learning easier. This unit explains strategies for taking notes in class and for reading your textbook." -- website

Grammar and Punctuation (The Learning Portal)
"The last step in the editing process is ensuring your grammar and punctuation is accurate. Familiarize yourself with sentence structure, parallelism, punctuation, articles and prepositions if you are not sure. Proofread your writing for the smaller errors like spelling or typos that can trip your reader." -- website
Punctuation (University of Toronto) - http://advice.writing.utoronto.ca/revising/punctuation/
"Many students do not take full advantage of punctuation. They never venture beyond the comma and the period—the two punctuation marks that nobody can do without. Some are afraid that if they use other forms of punctuation, they will do so incorrectly, so they never take the risk. Learning to punctuate effectively does involve learning the rules, and this handout summarizes the most important of them. . .This handout limits itself to punctuation that occurs within sentences: commas, semicolons, colons, dashes, and parentheses." -- website
Punctuation Index (Purdue Online Writing Lab)
"These OWL resources will help you with punctuation, such as using commas, quotation marks, apostrophes, and hyphens."

Building Sentences (The Writing Centre, University of Ottawa)
Paragraph Writing (The Learning Portal)
"Paragraphs are usually the building blocks of larger formats like reports, articles, emails or essays. Depending on their function in a piece of writing, paragraphs can have different purposes, and we can often identify their role by the way they are constructed. In general, paragraphs tend to have introductory sentences, supporting sentences, and concluding sentences. It is important to have a structure so your reader can follow your ideas." -- website
Parallelism (The Learning Portal)
Learn about the parallelism principle using the activity at this link.
Sentence Clarity (Purdue Online Writing Lab)
"There are many strategies for improving the clarity of your sentences and your papers." -- website Learn more at this link.
Sentence Error Correction - Revising Your Essay(The Learning Portal)