Some of you have spoken English for as long as you can remember. Some of you

may have learned to speak some other language, such as Spanish, Vietnamese, Farsi,

Polish, Arabic, or Chinese, before you learned to speak English. But all of you have

one thing in common: for all of you written English is a kind of second language---a

slightly unfamiliar territory. You may even be so uncomfortable with written

English that you try to avoid situations that force you to write.

This book is designed to make you more comfortable using written English

by presenting it as a distinct variety of English--a variety with certain rules that

differ from the rules we normally use when we speak. If you learn those rules, your

writing will improve.

You are going to learn those rules first by reading about them and, second, by

using them in your writing. You are already familiar with these two ways of

learning. For example, if you have learned to play a musical instrument, you know

that understanding everything your teacher says is not enough to make you pro-

ficient; you also have to learn how to feel what your teacher says. To use another

example, if you have learned how to play a sport, you know you can understand

what your coach says, but you also have to learn how to feel what he or she says.

And you learn how to feel it by practicing.

You will be doing a lot of practicing in this course; specifically, you will be

doing a great deal of writing. At this point, you may be feeling a little worried about

making mistakes when you write. You may even be getting rather tense and

anxious about the red marks that might appear on your papers after your teacher

reads what you have written.

Let us pause briefly here to consider the subject of mistakes. We commonly

make at least three different kinds of mistakes: good, embarrassing, and dangerous

ones.

Good mistakes are the kind people have to make in order to learn how to do

something new. For example, when you are learning to play a musical instrument,

you make lots of mistakes as you develop a feel for the things your teacher has told

you. Those mistakes are an important part of the learning process because you learn

from them. Similarly, when you are learning to play a sport, you make many

mistakes as you develop a.feel for the things your coach has told you about, such