10. Top misused words
Their- possession
e.g. - Their dog is loud.
There- location
e.g. - There is the restaurant.
They’re- they are
e.g. - They’re so funny.
13. More misused words
Two – number
e.g. – May I have two apples?
Too – also
e.g. – I’m hungry too!
To – goal, location
e.g. – I’m going to eat.
15. Outcome #2
Given a wordy sentence, participants will be
able to omit unnecessary words to simplify
the sentence.
16. Avoid wordiness
Omit unnecessary words
e.g. – used for fuel purposes used for fuel
e.g. – he is a man who he
e.g. – the reason why is that because
e.g. – the fact that he had not succeeded his failure
e.g. – His cousin, who is a member of the same firm
His cousin, a member of the same firm
17. Keep it simple, stupid
e.g. –
Original: Independent consultants have completed their
rigorous scrutiny of the highly specialized technical expertise,
interpersonal communications skills, and behavioral attitudes
exhibited by our customer service personnel in their mundane
and repetitive activities and concluded that not only are
anticipated performance levels routinely under-realized by our
personnel, but customer interactions are detrimental to the
organization.
Revised: Consultants have studied the performance of our
customer service personnel and found that they are performing
poorly and our customers aren’t happy.
18. Confident Tone
e.g. – Not: You must agree that I am qualified
for the position.
But: My qualifications in the areas of
accounting and customer service meet your
job requirements.
19. Sticking with one tense
e.g. – Yesterday, I went to the store and saw
Bob. He was in a hurry, because he had to
go to a meeting. I was surprised, because it
was Sunday.
20. Outcome #3
Given a sentence written in the passive
voice, participants will convert it to the active
voice and vice versa.
21. Active vs. passive
Active voice – the subject of the sentence is
doing the acting
e.g. – The manager asked her employees to
come to the team meeting early.
Passive voice – the subject is being acted
upon by the verb
e.g. – The employees were asked by their
manager to come to the team meeting early.
22. Emphasis. Vs. Subordination
e.g. – Emphasis: Smoking will no longer be
permitted in the building. The committee on
employee health and safety reached this decision
after considering evidence from researchers and
physicians on the dangers of second-hand smoke.
e.g. – Subordination: The committee on employee
health and safety has finished considering evidence,
and they have reached the decision that smoking will
no longer be permitted in the building.
29. Example sentence transformed
e.g. The girl was very good at writing papers.
e.g. The young woman was phenomenal at
creative writing.
e.g. The little girl was extremely gifted when it
came to scripting papers.
30. List of common difficult vocabulary
See Course Packet, page 6.
Examples: Dialect, Juxtaposition
Satirical, Validity,
38. Outcome #5
Know common roots, prefixes, and
suffixes, to help shape your spelling abilities.
39. Know your word parts
Root
Cede – go; Word(s): precede
Prefix
Ante – before; Words: antebellum
Suffix
Ed, d – past tense; Words: worked, died
40. Example of combining word parts
Anteceded
Prefix: ante – before
Root: cede – go
Suffix: d – past tense
The spelling of the word: Ante-cede-d
41. Just sound it out!
Listen to the word and use your best
discretion and knowledge to adapt to its
spelling.
Introduction
Intro – duc – tion
Spelling
Spell – ing
Formal
For – mal
42. SpellChecker
A device on almost all word processors and
even the Internet that corrects spelling
mistakes
Look for the red line!
43. Read to improve spelling
Make a word list of extremely difficult words
to spell every time you are reading the news,
books, magazines, etc.
44. Activity
Think of a word that is difficult to spell and
share it with the class!
