Top Skills Writing

While Top Skills: Writing Skills is intended as an aid for Selective Schools and scholarship exams, this book can be used productively by any upper primary student wishing to improve his or her written expression.

The book consists of 40 units of work. These cover the basic text types: description, narrative, procedure, explanation, exposition, discussion and review. As well, the units give practice in the areas which often create difficulty for young writers. The topics covered include:

• run-on sentences
• tenses of verbs
• subject-verb agreement
• correct use of person
• punctuation

Many exercises aim at improving the quality of writing focussing on:

• more appropriate word choice
• use of detail
• ‘showing rather than telling’
• practice in editing.

Answers are provided for all of the skills-based exercises. Model answers are provided for all writing tasks. Lists of topics for the various text types are included. Students learn to write well by writing often. This book will provide the opportunity to do this.