Real Stories

The All-Inclusive Textbook for Developmental Writing and Reading

Toni Ortner

• Publisher: Open Road Distribution
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781504029209
• eBook ISBN:
  9781504028981
• Topic: Study Aids
• Subtopic: Study Guides

Real Stories is a writing and reading text that works. The method Toni Ortner discusses is classroom-tested and designed to meet the needs of multi-cultural high school students. It contains three sections: "The Process of Writing" covers the basic building blocks of writing. "Time Savers for Grammar and Punctuation" includes types of sentences, how to find and eliminate runs-ons, comma splices and fragments, comma use, nouns, capitalization, direct quotes, verb tenses, and irregular verbs, practice exercises, an answer key, and tests. "The Reader" contains students' personal stories for analysis and discussion. Real Stories helps students use words to empower and enrich their lives.

Time-Savers for Grammar and Punctuation

Introduction

Time-Savers for Grammar and Punctuation is intended to enable you to identify and correct the most common errors in grammar, punctuation and sentence structure. Each concept is presented in clear language, avoiding technical terms whenever possible, and is followed by one or more focused exercises that provide practice and help reinforce the lesson. This approach provides the maximum instructional benefit relative to the time expended—hence the name Time-Savers.

While the topics have been arranged in a logical sequence to help you build your knowledge methodically, they may be studied in any order desired. So that you can work through Time-Savers at your own pace, the answers to Exercises are provided beginning on page 202. Answers to Tests must be checked by your teacher.

Topics Covered in This Section

Nouns

Common and Proper Nouns
Forming the Plurals of Nouns
Forming the Possessives of Nouns

Verbs

Action Verbs
Linking Verbs

Verb Tenses

The Simple Tenses
The Present Tense
The Past Tense
Irregular Verbs in the Past Tense
The Future Tense
The Perfect Tenses
What is the Past Participle?
The Present Perfect Tense
The Past Perfect Tense
The Future Perfect Tense
The Past Participle of Irregular Verbs
Three Confusing Verb Pairs
rise and raise
lie and lay
sit and set

The Sentence

The Simple Sentence
The Compound Sentence
The Complex Sentence

Identifying and Correcting Sentence Errors

Sentence Fragments
Run-On Sentences
Comma Splices

Punctuation and Capitalization

The Apostrophe
The Comma
Direct Quotations
What to Capitalize

Answers to Exercises

Nouns

A noun is a person, place or thing. We will begin by learning to identify common nouns and proper nouns. Then we will study special rules for creating the plurals of nouns and possessives of nouns.

Common and Proper Nouns

There are two types of nouns. A common noun (for example: man, city, building) names one of a general class of persons, places or things and is not capitalized. A proper noun (for example: John, New York, Empire State Building) names a specific person, place or thing and...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Preface
• Contents
• The Process of Writing
• The Revision Section
• Time-Savers for Grammar and Punctuation
• Three Confusing Verb Pairs
• The Sentence
• Identifying and Correcting Sentence Errors
• Punctuation and Capitalization
• Answers to Exercises
• The Reader
• Index
• Acknowledgments
• Copyright Page