Essay Skills serves as a guidebook for every step of the writing process. Emphasizing both process and practice with a focus on revision, this book helps to apply and advance writing skills using John Langan's proven techniques. Learning to write effective paragraphs and essays, master essential sentence skills, and read critically are turning points for writers. Along the way, there are many other important skills to explore and develop -using specific and concrete language to make a point and stick to it, selecting good supporting details to back up that point and create a convincing argument, organizing a paragraph in a way that best fits its purpose, and writing clear, error-free sentences to maximize the effectiveness of the writing. This book will prepare students to tackle many types of writing in college and beyond.

This fourth edition has a new, updated focus on working with sources and writing research papers. Students are introduced to using and locating online sources effectively and efficiently. In addition to learning how to choose sources, students are exposed to a new, more in-depth look at the skill of incorporating their sources into a source-based essay and research paper.

Unity
Discover a clearly stated point, or topic sentence, and make sure all the other information in the paragraph or eaasy is in support of that point.
Support
Support points with specific evidence, and plenty of it.
Coherence
Organize and connect supporting evidence so that paragraphs and essays transition smoothly from one but of supporting information to the next.
Sentence Skills
Revise and edit so that sentences are error-free for clearer and more effective communication.