UNIT II

WRITING AND GRAMMAR

"You can make anything by writing."

--C.S. Lewis

Basic Writing
 Writing is a system of graphic symbols that can be
used to convey meaning, and (2) the act of composing a text.
Basic writing, or developmental writing, is a subdiscipline
of composition studies which focuses on the writing of
students sometimes otherwise called "remedial" or
"underprepared", usually freshman college students.
Sometimes called "remedial" or "developmental" writing,
basic writing was developed in the 1970s in response to open
admissions policies. Basic writing can refer to both a type of composition course and a field of
study. The term "basic writing" was coined by Mina Shaughnessy, a pioneer in the field of basic
writing, to distinguish it from previous terms like "bonehead" or "remedial". BW courses are
designed to teach formal written standard English to students deemed under-prepared for first-
year composition. Institutions typically enroll students in basic writing courses based on
standardized or placement test scores, with standards varying by institution.

Basic writing skills include spelling, capitalization, punctuation, handwriting or

keyboarding, and sentence structure (for example, elimination of run-ons and sentence
fragments). Basic writing skills are sometimes called the “mechanics” of writing.

Why is Writing Important?

Writing is used in many areas of our lives.

 Writing is critical to becoming a good reader.
 Writing is an essential job skill.
 Writing is the primary basis upon which one’s work, learning, and intellect will be judged
—in college, in the work place and in the community.
 Writing equips us with communication and thinking skills.
 Writing expresses who we are as people.
 Writing makes our thinking and learning visible and permanent.
 Writing fosters our ability to explain and refine our ideas to others and ourselves.
 Writing preserves our ideas and memories.
 Writing allows us to understand our lives.
 Writing allows us to entertain others.

Grammar
 Grammar is the system of a language. People sometimes
describe grammar as the "rules" of a language; but in fact, no language
has rules*. If we use the word "rules", we suggest that somebody
created the rules first and then spoke the language, like a new game.
But languages did not start like that. Languages started by people
making sounds which evolved into words, phrases and sentences. No
commonly-spoken language is fixed. All languages change over time.
Do we need to study grammar to learn a language? The short
answer is "no". Many people in the world speak their own, native
language without having studied its grammar. Children start to speak before they even know the
word "grammar". But if you are serious about learning a foreign language, the long answer is
"yes, grammar can help you to learn a language more quickly and more efficiently." It's
important to think of grammar as something that can help you, like a friend. When you
understand the grammar (or system) of a language, you can understand many things yourself,
without having to ask a teacher or look in a book.
So, think of grammar as something good, something positive, something that you can use
to find your way - like a signpost or a map.

Parts of Speech

Parts of Speech is a category to which a word is assigned in accordance with its

syntactic functions. In English the main parts of speech are noun, pronoun, adjective, determiner,
verb, adverb, preposition, conjunction, and interjection.

NOUN

Noun - the word noun comes from the latin word “Nomen” which means name. A noun
is a word that refers to a thing (book), a person (Betty Crocker), an animal (cat), a place
(Omaha), a quality (softness), an idea (justice), or an action (yodeling). It's usually a single
word, but not always: cake, shoes, school bus, and time and a half are all nouns.

Nouns form a large proportion of English vocabulary and they come in a wide variety of types.
Nouns can name a person:
 Albert Einstein
 the president
 my mother
 a girl
Nouns can also name a place:
 Mount Vesuvius
 Disneyland
 my bedroom
Nouns can also name things, although sometimes they might be intangible things, such as
concepts, activities, or processes. Some might even be hypothetical or imaginary things.
 shoe
 faucet
 freedom
 The Elder Wand
 Basketball

Proper nouns vs. common nouns

There are a number of different categories of nouns.
There are common nouns and proper nouns. A common noun refers to a person, place, or
thing but is not the name of a particular person, place, or thing. Examples
are animal, sunlight, and happiness.
A proper noun is the name of a particular person, place, or thing; it usually begins with a
capital letter: Abraham Lincoln, Argentina, and World War I are all proper nouns.

One important distinction to be made is whether a noun is a proper noun or a common noun. A
proper noun is a specific name of a person, place, or thing, and is always capitalized.
 Does Tina have much homework to do this evening?
 Tina is the name of a specific person.
 I would like to visit Old Faithful.
Old Faithful is the specific name of a geological phenomenon.

The opposite of a proper noun is a common noun, sometimes known as a generic noun. A
common noun is the generic name of an item in a class or group and is not capitalized unless
appearing at the beginning of a sentence or in a title.
 The girl crossed the river.
Girl is a common noun; we do not learn the identity of the girl by reading this sentence, though
we know the action she takes. River is also a common noun in this sentence.

VERB

Verbs are the action words in a sentence that describe what the subject is doing. Along
with nouns, verbs are the main part of a sentence or phrase, telling a story about what is taking
place. In fact, without a verb, full thoughts can’t be properly conveyed, and even the simplest
sentences, such as Maria sings, have one. Actually, a verb can be a sentence by itself, with the
subject, in most case you, implied, such as, Sing! and Drive!

When learning the rules of grammar, schoolchildren are often taught that verbs are ‘doing’
words, meaning they signify the part of the sentence which explains the action taking
place: He ran away, she eats chocolate cake on Sundays, the horses gallop across the
fields. Ran, eats and gallop are the ‘action’ parts of those sentences, thus they are the verbs.
However, it can be confusing because not all verbs are easily identifiable as action: I know  your
name, Jack thought  about it, we considered several applications. These are non-action verbs,
i.e. those that describe a state of being, emotion, possession, sense or opinion. Other non-action
verbs include love, agree, feel, am, and have.
How to Recognize a Verb
As you can see from the examples above, one clue to help you recognize a verb is its location
compared to the subject. Verbs almost always come after a noun or pronoun. These nouns and
pronouns are referred to as the subject.  The verb thought comes after the noun Jack, so the
action Jack (subject) was taking was thinking (verb).

1. Mark eats his dinner quickly.

2. We went to the market.
3. You write neatly in your notebook.
4. They thought about all the prizes in the competition.

PRONOUN

A pronoun is defined as a word or phrase that is used as a substitution for a noun or noun
phrase, which is known as the pronoun’s antecedent. Pronouns are short words and can do
everything that nouns can do and are one of the building blocks of a sentence. Common
pronouns are he, she, you, me, I, we, us, this, them, that. A pronoun can act as a subject, direct
object, indirect object, object of the preposition, and more and takes the place of any person,
place, animal or thing. So, coffee becomes it, Barbara becomes she, Jeremy becomes he, the
team becomes they, and in a sentence, Barbara drinks a cup of coffee every afternoon could
become she drinks a cup of it every afternoon, or even she drinks it every afternoon, where
the it would substitute the cup of coffee, not just the coffee.
 He  We
 It  Who  Anyone
 You  Him  Something
 I  Nobody
 Them
 They  Whoever

1. Billy, Caren, and I were playing poker with friends -> We were playing poker with
friends.
2. Ellie loves watching movies. -> She loves watching movies, especially if they are
comedies.
3. Will Daniel be going to the circus with Sarah? -> Will he be going there with her?

ADJECTIVE

Adjectives are words that describe or modify other words, making your writing and
speaking much more specific, and a whole lot more interesting. Words like small, blue,
and sharp are descriptive, and they are all examples of adjectives. Because adjectives are used to
identify or quantify individual people and unique things, they are usually positioned before
the noun or pronoun that they modify. Some sentences contain multiple adjectives.

In the following examples, the highlighted words are adjectives:

1. They live in a big, beautiful.

 2. Since it’s a hot day, Lisa is wearing a sleeveless.
3. The mountaintops are covered in sparkling.
4. On her birthday, Brenda received an antique vase filled with fragrant.

Name: ________________________________________________________ Date: _________________

Course, Year, & Section: ___________________________________

Activity 3
Direction: Read and analyze the story then find the moral lesson or the message of the story of
“The Starfish”. Encircle the nouns that you can spot in the story.

The Starfish Story: one step towards

changing the world
By Peter Straube

You may have heard this one, but I find that it doesn’t hurt to be reminded of it every
once in a while.  First let me tell you the story, and then we can
talk about it. 

Once upon a time, there was an old man who used to go

to the ocean to do his writing. He had a habit of walking on
the beach every morning before he began his work. Early one
morning, he was walking along the shore after a big storm had
passed and found the vast beach littered with starfish as far as
the eye could see, stretching in both directions. 

Off in the distance, the old man noticed a small boy approaching.  As the boy walked, he
paused every so often and as he grew closer, the man could see that he was occasionally
bending down to pick up an object and throw it into the sea.  The boy came closer still
and the man called out, “Good morning!  May I ask what it is that you are doing?”

The young boy paused, looked up, and replied “Throwing starfish into the ocean. The
tide has washed them up onto the beach and they can’t return to the sea by themselves,”
the youth replied. “When the sun gets high, they will die, unless I throw them back into
the water.”

The old man replied, “But there must be tens of thousands of starfish on this beach. I’m
afraid you won’t really be able to make much of a difference.”

The boy bent down, picked up yet another starfish and threw it as

far as he could into the ocean. Then he turned, smiled and said,
“It made a difference to that one!”

adapted from The Star Thrower, by Loren Eiseley (1907 – 1977)

We all have the opportunity to help create positive change, but if

you’re like me, you sometimes find yourself thinking, “I’m already really busy, and how
much of a difference can I really make?”  I think this is especially true when we’re
talking about addressing massive social problems like tackling world hunger or finding a
cure for cancer, but it pops up all of the time in our everyday lives, as well. So, when I
catch myself thinking that way, it helps to remember this story.  You might not be able
to change the entire world, but at least you can change a small part of it, for someone. 
They say that one of the most common reasons we procrastinate is because we see the
challenge before us as overwhelming, and that a good way to counter that is to break the
big challenge down into smaller pieces and then take those one at a time–like one
starfish at a time.  And to that one starfish, it can make a world of difference.

What is the moral lesson of the story? Explain. (10 pts.)

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Name: ________________________________________________________ Date: _________________

Course, Year, & Section: ___________________________________

Activity 4
Direction: Underline the correct form of the verb used in each sentence.

1. Families is/are/was an integral part of one’s life.

2. A family serves/serve/served as the first school to the child where one learns about various
things.

3. I feel/feels/feal very lucky to be born in a family which has made me a better person

4. My mother am/is/are my strength as I can always count on her when I need a shoulder to cry
on.

5. Father is/am/were someone who will always hide away his troubles for the sake of his
family.

6. My siblings are/is/was my best friends on whom I can always fall back on.

7. They am/is/are my first teachers and my first friends.

8. My family were/is/are my power that keeps pushing me to achieve newer heights.

9. They are/is/was responsible for creating a safe and secure environment for me at home.

10. We believe/believes/beleive in the power of love above everything and that drives us to help
each other to become better human beings.
Name: ________________________________________________________ Date: _________________

Course, Year, & Section: ___________________________________

Activity 5
I. Direction: Write a short paragraph to introduce your family/family members. Use adjectives
to describe them.
___________________________________________
(Title)
______________________________________________________________________________
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II. Direction: Describe the pictures below using an adjective.

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Lebron James BTS

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Eiffel Tower EDSA
 ________________________________ _____________________________
Ice Cream Clown

________________________________ ______________________________
School Ring Light

________________________________ ________________________________
Puppy Marshmallow

III. Direction: Write adjectives from letters A to Z.

A - _________________________ J - _________________________ S - _________________________

B - _________________________
C - _________________________
D - _________________________
E - _________________________
F - _________________________
G - _________________________
H - _________________________
I - _________________________
K - _________________________
L - _________________________
M - _________________________
N - _________________________
O - _________________________
P - _________________________
Q - _________________________
R - _________________________
T - _________________________
U - _________________________
V - _________________________
W - ________________________
X - _________________________
Y - _________________________
Z - _________________________