What’s in Writing Essentials Online?

Writing Essentials Online is packed with content designed to help you grow as a student writer. Whether your instructor assigns the resources or encourages you to work with the material at your own pace, we’re confident that Writing Essentials Online will help you develop the skills you need to succeed in college and beyond. For help using LaunchPad, please see the College Students Support Community, or contact Tech Support. You can find Tech Support contact information by clicking “Help” in the upper right corner of your screen.

Support for writing paragraphs and essays

Writing Essentials Online meets you where you are, providing brief instruction on important writing skills with lots of opportunities for practice. Chapter 1 will help you polish your critical reading and thinking skills while Chapter 2 provides strategies for improving your vocabulary. To brush up on essay writing basics, see Chapters 3-5, which cover the writing process from prewriting through editing. For help drafting effective paragraphs, see Chapters 6-8, and for information on using patterns to write paragraphs and essays, see Chapters 9-25. Important grammar and editing information can be found in Chapters 28-37. Throughout, pay attention to the Four Basics boxes, which provide an outline of each chapter or major topic.

Interactive content and tutorials

Writing Essentials Online includes videos and helpful tutorials on topics such as reading critically, working with and citing sources, and using digital writing tools.

Downloadable exercises and reference materials

You’ll find content in a variety of formats, so you can choose the format you prefer. Many of the exercises in Writing Essentials Online can be downloaded so that you can complete them at home or in class and hand them in for grading.

In the Appendices, you’ll find handy reference materials (charts of common prefixes, roots, suffixes with their meanings; a transitions table; a guide to grammar terminology; templates for graphic organizers; and a chart of useful editing and proofreading marks) that you can access as needed or download and keep for later use, as well as detailed information about MLA and APA documentation styles.

LearningCurve

Developed in light of the latest advances in learning research, LearningCurve is a game-like adaptive quizzing program that covers topics from grammar and usage to reading critically and argument. The less you know about a topic, the more LearningCurve focuses on it, and the better you do, the more challenging the questions become, helping you concentrate on exactly what you need to learn.