The Complete Writing Course: Develop True Writing Mastery

Compare emails and letters, and master the standard business letter structure and conventions. Review good and bad examples and write a strong cover letter for job applications.

This lesson compares posted letters and email, noting similarities and differences in formality, speed, personal touch, and how subject lines, recipients, and attachments work.

Master general letter rules by outlining a standard header, addressing, formatting, and closing conventions, including salutations, punctuation, and readability through white space.

Discover how to format letters with headers, dates, salutations, closings, and contact details, adapt templates to your needs, and use white space to avoid walls of text.

Explore formal and informal writing, comparing tone, indirectness, and politeness through examples of salutations, openings, requests, and closings in letters and emails.

Write a concise one-page cover letter to accompany your CV. Apply to posted, internal, or speculative roles, follow conventions, and highlight 1–2 achievements with a call to action.

Explore good and bad cover letter examples, tailor templates, highlight relevant experience, and craft a clear purpose and call to action, noting header information omitted.

Explore recommendation letter examples for general, academic placement, university entry, and character references, and learn to tailor openings, highlight honest, loyal, hardworking traits, and include contact details.

This introduction guides English learners in writing reviews for four types: books, films, restaurants, and products, outlining structure, essential content, and practical templates with Q&A support.

Write a useful restaurant review by outlining general information, evaluation criteria, pros and cons, star ratings, and a clear recommendation, with fair, precise language and proofreading.

Write a balanced film review blending personal opinion with critical analysis and avoiding spoilers. Structure includes introduction, body, recommendation, and conclusion, citing evidence and elements like cast, director, budget, adaptations.

Develop a structured book review by crafting a compelling hook, presenting basic information, a spoiler-free plot summary, your critique, a recommendation, and a rating.

Write a useful product review in informal to semiformal style by trying the product, describing features for readers, weighing pros and cons, and delivering a clear recommendation with a conclusion.

Learn how comma splices join independent clauses with a comma and fix them with a period, semicolon, or coordinating conjunctions; discover when brief statements or tag questions make them acceptable.

Explore adverb overuse and learn to replace weak adverbs with stronger verbs, avoid literally misused words, and favor precise actions over words like very or suddenly.

Learn common pronoun errors, including subject pronouns, object pronouns, reflexive pronouns, and pronoun ambiguity, with clear examples like to my wife and me and avoiding the reflexive pronoun myself.

This lesson covers common irregular verb mistakes, contrasts with regular -ed forms, and uses run/ran/run, go/went/gone, come/came/come, and present perfect examples.

Master modifier usage by identifying dangling, misplaced, and ambiguous modifiers, and learn to correct sentences with clear, precise meaning.

Practice writing short 25 to 30 word emails or letters for elementary learners, using provided information to describe meeting plans, travel details, or activities, and compare answers for improvement.

Develop writing for short format questions by practicing 40–50 word emails that apologize for missing a meeting and name who will attend, then compare answers to improve word count and clarity.

Master long-format questions for intermediate learners by analyzing initial and extra information, aiming for 120–160 words, and composing a concise fax that uses compromise expressions.

Master advanced short format questions by composing a 150–180 word report from a bar chart on three photocopiers’ purchase price, warranty, and running costs.

Master advanced long format questions by writing 200–250 word reports or letters from given scenarios, applying required content and structured reasoning to real-world business cases.

Explore literary devices in an alphabetically organized reference section with examples from literature and everyday life, and learn how to use them, with differences such as understatement and leitmotifs highlighted.

Explore alliteration, where words share sounds rather than letters, and see how marketers and brand names use it for memorable branding and tongue twisters.

Explore how anachronisms—two main types, intentional or unintentional—affect the timeline and technology in stories, using juxtaposition to shape writing from Shakespeare to modern films.

Explore cliffhangers as a literary device that ends chapters with unresolved conflicts to entice readers, a technique not usually used in nonfiction.

Explore colloquialisms, informal language, and slang to bring realism to characters and dialogue. Learn when to avoid them in writing, such as job applications, and recognize contractions, dialects, and accents.

Explore the deus ex machina, a literary device where a god from the machine delivers an implausible resolution. Trace its Greek origins with Euripides and modern examples.

Explore euphemisms as indirect, polite expressions for awkward topics, and learn techniques like substitution, abbreviations, mispronunciation, and foreign words used in everyday speech and literature.

Explore hyperbole, or overstatement, as an exaggerated device for humor and emphasis, distinct from simile or metaphor, used in literature, poetry, and everyday speech.

Explore the three types of irony—verbal, situational, and dramatic—and see how irony creates contrast between appearance and reality in literature and everyday life.

Explore leitmotifs, a double negative that creates an ironic effect by negating the opposite of a positive statement, with everyday and literary examples.

Discover malapropisms, where incorrect, similar-sounding words create comedy in writing. Learn their history from Mrs. Malaprop and Dogberry to modern examples, and how misused words shape humor.

Explore oxymorons, a literary device pairing opposite words to create drama, humor, and irony, with examples like deafening silence and alone together, while distinguishing them from paradox.

Explore how the passive voice emphasizes the action over the subject, often used in reports, scientific writing, and literature, with examples like the house was painted last week.

Explore sarcasm as a literary device, define bitter irony and its uses beyond literature, and examine self-deprecating, brooding, deadpan, polite, obnoxious, manic, and raging forms with examples.

Explore how similes use like and as to compare two things, attach meaning, and distinguish them from metaphors, clarifying the reader's understanding of the writer's intent.

Explore zoomorphism, the literary device of attributing animal traits to humans, objects, or events, with examples from superheroes, idioms, gods, mythology, and fantasy.

Explore concrete and abstract nouns, distinguishing tangible nouns you can see or touch from intangible concepts, with examples like table, country, chairs, England, Lisa, love, and knowledge.

Learn to distinguish countable and uncountable nouns, apply plural and singular verbs, and compare quantities using as many as, as few as, as much as, and less than.

Explore the difference between common and proper nouns, with examples of people, places, things, and feelings, and learn capitalization rules and brand-name exceptions.

Explore collective nouns and how they differ from plurals. See examples like a school of fish, a band of musicians, and an orchestra acting as a single unit.

Explains how pronouns replace nouns to avoid repetition, covers definite and indefinite, subject and object forms, and key types like possessive, reflexive, intensive, demonstrative, and interrogative.

Use a simple pronoun trick to decide between I and me by removing the other person, then re-add them to get correct forms such as I visited the neighbors.

Master possessive nouns and ownership by applying apostrophe rules for singular, plural, and abstract nouns, with examples of multiple owners and place names.

Explore how gerunds, ing-form verbs that act as nouns, serve as subjects, direct objects, complements, or prepositional objects, form compound nouns, take possessive forms, and can be replaced by pronouns.

Learn how compound nouns combine two or more words to name a single item, with meaning different from its parts, and how they’re written as open, closed, or hyphenated.

Explore how articles function in English, including definite, indefinite, and zero articles, with usage rules and plenty of examples to clarify when and why to use them.

Explore the definite article, the marker for specific people, places, or things, with plurals, superlatives, ordinals, decades, and famous names, plus pronunciation before vowel sounds.

Master the indefinite articles a and an by using the vowel-sound rule before singular nouns and identifying unspecific or generic referents.

Explore zero articles in English, covering generic plurals, uncountable nouns, proper nouns, abstract nouns, materials, and meals, with examples and the Tom Hanks exception for a specific person.

Explore adjectives and how they enhance nouns with detail, covering different types, comparing equality and inequality, superlatives, and the order of multiple adjectives.

Explore six common adjective types—descriptive, quantitative, demonstrative, possessive, interrogative, and distributive—through clear examples that show how adjectives describe nouns and add detail.

Explore how to compare adjectives for equality using the as plus adjective plus as pattern, with positive, negative forms, and question usage.

Learn to compare unequal adjectives using positive and negative forms: er for short words, y to i before er, double consonants, three-syllable forms with more, and irregulars like better, worse.

Develop your understanding of verbs as action and state words, explore their categories, and master regular and irregular, active and passive, transitive and intransitive forms, finite and non finite usage.

Explore verb categories, including action verbs, stative verbs, light verbs, phrasal verbs, conditional verbs, causative verbs, active verbs, and reflexive verbs, with practical examples.

Explore how regular verbs form the present participle, past tense, and past participle from the base, with examples like play and dance.

Explore irregular verbs by examining past tense and past participle forms, identify which verbs share forms or differ, and highlight present tense exceptions like be, do, and go.

Explore active vs. passive voice, identify subject and verb, and form the passive with 'to be' and the past participle, noting unknown or implied agents and the focus shift.

Distinguish transitive and intransitive verbs, identify how objects or prepositional phrases affect voice, and learn to convert transitive sentences to the passive voice with clear examples.

Explore auxiliary verbs, including be and have as main auxiliaries, and their use in passive voice, continuous and perfect aspects, with negation and question forms using do.

Examine the complexities of phrasal verbs, including separable and non-separable forms, multiple meanings, and logic challenges, using take off and take on as illustrative examples.

Learn how to form adverbs from adjectives by adding -ly, with quick becoming quickly, beautiful becoming beautifully, ll endings, and whole becoming wholly, shy or sly becoming shyly or slyly.

Explore relative adverbs where, when, and why to join two related sentences, replace preposition plus which with a relative adverb, and apply restrictive and nonrestrictive clause rules.

Learn how to form comparative adverbs, using -er for short adverbs, more or less for longer forms, and irregulars like well and badly, with clear omission when understood.

Master superlative adverbs by forming short adverbs with -est or -st (y to i before -est), using most or least for longer words, and noting irregulars like well and badly.

Explore adverbs of place, showing how they express location, direction, distance, and movement, usually at the end of a sentence, and how they differ from prepositions.

Adverbs of time tell when something happened or how long it took, usually at the end of a sentence, and use for duration or since for a point.

Explore adverbs of frequency, which answer how often and can be definite or indefinite. See how their position varies, before the main verb or between auxiliary and main verb.

Explore adverbs of certainty, their placement after auxiliary verbs before main verbs, how negation alters them, and their range from definitely to probably, with examples and a 0–100 certainty scale.

Explore adverbs of degree, their role in signaling intensity and completeness, and their placement before the modified word. Note that very can be replaced with a better word.

Adverbs of manner answer how something happens and modify verbs, adjectives, or clauses, formed by adding -ly with exceptions; placement can change meaning and they differ from adverbs of degree.

Discover adverbs of viewpoint, which show whose perspective and what part of something is discussed, and how words or phrases can start a sentence and be set off by commas.

Learn how adverbs of completeness and incompleteness express action completion, using examples like absolutely, completely, partially, and mostly to describe degrees from minimally to fully.

Explore tenses and aspects, covering past, present, future, and the four aspects—simple, continuous, perfect, perfect continuous—forming 12 combinations; learn usage, formation, examples, and reported speech with backshift rules.

Explore the present continuous tense, also called present progressive, used for things happening now, temporary situations, future plans, and describing habits and trends; master its formation with examples.

Learn the present perfect continuous tense, its formation, usage, and examples. Focus on duration, unfinished actions in the present, temporary situations or habits, and recent results with present relevance.

Master the past simple for completed actions, states, and feelings, using the formation subject did base form, and its uses in the second conditional and reported speech.

Master the past continuous tense by learning its formation and its uses for unfinished actions, background scenes, duration, change of mind, old habits, and reported speech, with examples.

Master how the past perfect shows earlier past events and their consequences, formed with subject had past participle, and used in third conditional and reported speech with clear examples.

Master the past perfect continuous, for actions started in the past and continued. Learn its formation: subject had been plus the verb in -ing, including contractions and reported speech.

Master the future simple tense: formation with will, shall, or be going to, plus contractions, questions, and uses like future facts, predictions, promises, and first conditional.

Explore the future continuous, or future progressive, for unfinished actions in the future, predictions, and polite inquiries. Learn its formation: subject plus will be plus verb-ing.

Master the future perfect tense: formation—subject plus will have plus past participle—and usage for actions not yet completed, with time expressions and a note on contractions in formal writing.

Explore the future perfect continuous tense, its formation as subject plus will have been plus verb-ing, and its use for duration with examples and guidance on contractions.

Master reporting speech by applying the back one tense rule, adjusting pronouns, and handling modal verbs; explore reported questions and when to use if or whether.

Explore prepositions by function, with grouped lessons on time, place, direction, reason, and more; learn how words serve as prepositions or adverbs and compare examples.

Explore the most common prepositions of time—at, on, in—and expand to others like after, during, since, by, until, before, and for durations.

Explore prepositions of place to describe the location of objects, people, and places, including at, in, on, near, between, behind, and in front of.

Explore prepositions of direction to express movement towards, onto, and into, and distinguish them from prepositions of place with clear examples.

Explore prepositions of reason, including for, through, and because of, and learn how they explain why events happen with practical examples and common alternatives like due to and thanks to.

Learn how prepositions of connection express possession, relationships, and accompaniment using to, with, and of, with examples like mine and his, and practice correct usage.

Explore how to use prepositions of device, by, with, and on, to describe technologies, machines, and transportation methods with clear, unambiguous phrasing.

Explore prepositions of agency and how they express past causes in passive and active voice, using by for people or animals and with for things.

Explore prepositions of origin, from and of, used to describe nationality, hometown, ethnicity, and where something was designed; from is more common than of, with examples like whisky from Scotland.

Identify whether a word is a preposition or an adverb by looking for an object; with an object, it's a preposition, otherwise an adverb or adverbial phrase.

Explore conditionals in English, including zero, first, second, third, and mixed conditionals, with focus on their structure, formation with appropriate tenses and aspects, and extensive examples.

Master the zero conditional to state facts and give instructions, using if plus simple present, then simple present, with the option to swap if with when and ensure correct punctuation.

Explore the first conditional, using the form if + present simple, will + base verb, to express possible conditions and their likely results, with promises or warnings and examples.

Master the second conditional to express wishes or give advice for unlikely situations, using if plus simple past followed by would or would be, and keeping flexible word order.

Master the third conditional to express regret and criticism, learn its formation with if plus past perfect and would have, and study past impossible outcomes.

Explore mixed conditionals, learn when to use them, and master the two main formats—if past perfect, then present conditional, or if this had happened, this would have happened—plus examples.

Explore conjunctions in English, from coordinating and subordinating to correlative types, and learn how to join words, phrases, and independent and dependent clauses for smooth writing.

Discover coordinating conjunctions, or coordinators, the seven fanboys that join words, phrases, and clauses of the same type, with usage patterns and swap rules.

Learn about subordinating conjunctions, what they are, when and how to use them, and how punctuation changes with clause order, with examples like although, while, because, until, since.

Master correlative conjunctions and their pairs that join words, phrases, or sentences. Explore how to use them and review pairs like either or, neither nor, and not only, but also.

Discover how clauses—independent and dependent—center on a subject and a verb, and explore subordinate, adjective, adverbial, and nominal clauses, plus the difference between clauses and phrases with clear examples.

Learn how to use 'used to' for past habits, and be/get used to for familiarity and adaptation, including formation and negation.

Explore a dedicated punctuation reference that you can consult as needed, with options to watch in sequence or refer to specific topics, and access help via Q&A.

Explore how full stops, exclamation marks, and question marks end sentences to convey neutral information, intensity, or disbelief. See examples and learn how enders shape tone and meaning across contexts.

Master the full stop, or period, and learn how it ends sentences, signals abbreviations, decimals, and website addresses, while comparing UK and US usage and spacing.

Explore how the exclamation mark conveys strong emotion and urgency, adds emphasis, signals sarcasm, and can pair with other marks in writing.

Explore how the question mark ends questions, including rules for abbreviations and indirect questions. Learn how to format titles containing question marks and how italics interact with such titles.

Learn how to use pauses and breaks with commas, semicolons, colons, and ellipses through numerous examples, including uk–us differences and oxford comma subtleties, plus correcting colon misuse and comma splices.

Learn how to use commas in introductory phrases, lists, quotes, numbers, dates, and non-restrictive clauses, compare UK and US usage, and fix comma splices.

Explore the Oxford comma, a series comma that clarifies lists in writing. Compare examples with and without the final comma to see its impact in UK English and potential ambiguities.

Explore how to use colons to introduce lists, connect related independent clauses, separate hours from minutes, show ratios, and mark warnings, emails, and dialogue with clear capitalization guidelines.

Identify colon misuse and learn fixes by omitting colons or restructuring sentences after prepositions or verbs. Use examples to clarify correct use of such as and lists.

Explore how ellipses convey omission, pause, or suspense with three dots, and learn spacing practices that signal omitted details while preserving clarity and meaning.

Explore hyphens, dashes, slashes, and apostrophes as connectors and dividers, learning how and when to split or join ideas through examples, with a Q&A for clarification.

Master hyphen usage to join words clearly, form double-barreled surnames, indicate ranges, hyphenate numbers, and split words over lines, improving readability in writing.

Explore how dashes replace brackets, commas, and colons to create informal writing, with examples of placement and spacing differences in UK vs US styles.

Master apostrophes for contractions and possession, including it's vs its and traditional versus modern possessive rules; learn when pronouns don't take apostrophes.

Master the use of quotation marks: single and double quotes, nested quotes, punctuation with questions and exclamations, UK vs US rules, and citing titles.

Explore the uses of round, square, and curly brackets, and learn how parentheses enclose nonessential information without altering the main sentence, with punctuation rules for removal and nesting.

Explore a potpourri of symbols used in writing beyond traditional punctuation, learn how these signs can change sentence structure and meaning, and see how punctuation can dramatically alter meaning.

Explore how the asterisk marks footnotes, masks vulgarity, and signals corrections or emotions in fiction, while noting pronunciation and common advertising footnotes like promise and conditions.

Explore the hash sign, its names from pound key to hashtag, and how social media, currency, and weight use it; learn its linguistic role in English writing.

Explore how punctuation can dramatically alter a sentence's meaning by adding, removing, or moving marks. Enjoy this fun wrap-up that rewards you for finishing the section.

Explore the playful world of punctuation and learn how commas and colons shift meaning. See humorous examples that show how misplaced punctuation alters intent and why grammar matters.

Leave a written review to help improve this course by sharing what you liked, what could be better, and your detailed feedback as updates roll in with lifetime access.