Louis Said:

how do I improve my kids writing skills?

We Answered:

read. the harder the book and vocab in the book, the better you will be at writing.

Gladys Said:

How to improve my writing skills?

We Answered:

When I first saw this question I was thinking that reading would be the answer, but you say you read a lot. Maybe you should just read more non-fiction

Jill Said:

Has anyone got any advice on study skills and essay writing?

We Answered:

BREAK THINGS DOWN IN SMALL SECTIONS i.e. dates, towns people involved.
In essays only write what you know, make it descriptive, funny, to keep the person reading it enthralled, care in spelling punctuation.
i shall give you a tester
flying kites write a essay on that.

Olga Said:

Why are effective writing and studying skills important in college and beyond?

We Answered:

They are important in college as you will have to write lots of essays. Effective writing will help you keep to the point in your essays and stay within your word count and study skills will help you with how to construct and write and your essays and help you with the terminology you should be using at the level you studying.

They are important after college as you will you will need to complete application forms to apply for university/jobs, you will need to write your C.V./resume. You will need to write letters and/or e-mails to communicate with people, there are many forms you will need to complete over your lifetime and depending on the job/career you choose you may have to write reports and maybe even provide feedback on other peoples reports.

Sara Said:

PSAT- How to study for writing skills section?

We Answered:

There are basically 17 grammar errors that you need to recognize on the writing section (in the improving sentences part and the identifying sentence errors part).
They are
- Subject-verb agreement (not seen often, make sure that when a singular noun is used the verb modifying it is singular, same for a plural noun - make sure the verb is plural)
- Adjective/ adverb agreement (an adj. modifies a noun, an adv. modifies a verb, adj., or another adv.)
- Pronoun/ Antecedent Agreement (a pronoun takes the place of a noun, the noun the pronoun replaces is called the antecedent, mainly seen when the sentence starts off talking about "one" and then the pronoun changes to "you")
- Idiomatic expressions (rarely seen, things like preoccupied "with", decision I agreed "to", try "to" go, regardless not irregardless)
- Incorrect use of words (rarely seen, illusion/allusion, among/between, affect/effect, their/there/they're)
- Double negatives (rarely seen)
- Confusion of verb form (infinitives and gerunds)
- Using the wrong verb tense (use cues from the sentence, like time periods, to figure out the verb tense)
- Pronoun case in compound subjects and objects (remove one of the subjects and read the sentence to see if the remaining subject makes sense in the subject)
- Ambiguous pronouns (when it is unclear what or who the pronoun is referring too, ex: When the bike crashed into the fence. "it" was damaged. What was damaged?)
- Error in comparison (make sure like things are being compared, ex: the snout of a crocodile is longer and pointier than "an alligator". In this sentence, the snout of the crocodile is being compared to the alligator, you want to replace "an alligator" with "that of an alligator" or "an alligator's")
- Sentence fragments (missing the subject or verb)
- Run-on sentences (when two or more independent clauses are joined by a comma - an independent clause is one that can stand on its own as a sentence. Can be fixed 4 ways - replace comma with period or semicolon, add a conjuntion, or make one of the clauses dependent - unable to be a sentence by itself)
- Faulty coordination - subordination (when two clauses are joined incorrectly, ex: "Because" he was unhappy all the time, he smiled a lot. He doesn't smile because he is unhappy, you want to change "Because" into something like "Although")
- Modifier errors (modifier: word or phrase that provides extra info about nouns and verbs in a sentence, must appear next to the word it is modifying, ex: Trekking through the jungle, the unfamiliar "sounds" began to frighten John. In this sentence, it sounds like the "sounds" were trekking through the jungle, you want to fix the sentence so it reads: "Trekking through the jungle, John was frightened by unfamiliar sounds. Now it sounds like John was doing the trekking.)
- Parallelism (Different parts of a sentence must share the same grammatical structure, ex: Joe likes fishing, swimming, and "long walks". You want to make the three things listed parallel, so "long walks" would become "walking")
- Redundant pronoun (When a pronoun that is not needed is restated)

Sorry that it's long, but I hope this helps!