Introduction for Students<br > To learn any skill -- whether basketball， tennis， chess， CPR， com-<br > puter programming， or the electric guitar -- takes practice. En-<br > glish composition is no exception: In a composition class， you will<br > learn to write by writing， and you will learn to revise by revising.<br > Developmental Exercises to Accompany Rules for Writers will<br > sharpen your revision skills by giving you a great deal of con-<br > trolled， yet realistic， practice. Let s say， for example， that you want<br > to learn to identify and revise sentence fragments. Your first step<br > is to read section 19 in Rules for Writers， Fourth Edition， and to<br > study the flow chart on page 169. Then， keeping Rules for Writers<br > open to section 19， work on Exercise 19-1 in Developmental Exer-<br >cises to Accompany Rules for Writers. Exercise 19-1， which we call<br > a "guided practice，" gives codes in the margin (such as 19a or<br > 19c) next to all fragments. In addition to telling you where to look<br >for fragments， the codes refer to specific rules in the text， so ffyou<br >have trouble identifying or fixing a particular fragment， you can<br >consult Rules for Writers for help. When you have finished the<br >exercise， you should check your answers. Answers to the first ex-<br >ercise in each set appear in the back of this book， beginning on<br >page 185.<br > Once you have done the guided practice exercise， attempt<br >the other exercises in the set; continue to refer to Rules for Writ-<br >ers when you run into trouble. You ll find that the rest of the exer-<br >crees in a set vary in style and level of difficulty. In the set on<br >fragments， for example， one exercise asks you to identify the cor-<br >rect sentence in a pair of word groups; another， presented in para-<br >graph form， asks you to identify fragments and to think about<br >possible revision strategies; and the final three exercises give you<br >practice in both identifying and revising fragments. Throughout<br >the entire set， the subject you ll be reading about is the Beatles.<br >Other exercise sets resemble the one on fragments. In those sets<br >you will encounter a number of famous persons you are likely to<br >read about in other college classes: men and women such as Karl<br >Marx. Ha~Tiet Beecher Stowe Frederick Douglass， Albert Einstein<br >P~e~up， amd Amelia Earhart. <br > Wanda Van Goor and Diana Hacker<br > Prince George s Community College<br >