Exam 8: Proofreading to Correct Your Personal Error Patterns

Read the paragraph below and answer the questions that follow it. (1) To calm yourself when you're feeling stressed, try a simple but effective deep breathing technique. (2) First, sit up straight, and place one of your hands on your chest and the other on your abdomen. (3) Next, pull a deep breath in through your nose so that your abdomen expands and the hand on it rises. (4) The hand on your chest should not move much at all. (5) Then, as you exhale through your mouth, push out the air while you pull in your abdominal muscles. (6) The hand on your abdomen should move inward while the other hand stays still. (7) Inhale again, and repeat the process. (8) As you continue this cycle of inhaling and exhaling while your abdomen rises and falls, you will get more oxygen into your lungs and bloodstream, and you will begin to feel less tense and more relaxed. -Select the number of the topic sentence in the paragraph above.

Read the essay below. For each of the questions that follow, select the letter of the correct answer. Use the following to answer question: Quit Smoking Now (1) In the United States today, an estimated 25.9 million men and 22.8 million women are smokers. Every day, about 3,000 people under the age of eighteen become smokers. Still, though, four out of every five smokers wish they could quit. For a number of reasons, every individual who smokes should try very hard to kick the habit. (2) One obvious reason to stop smoking is to save money-quite a lot of it, as a matter of fact. The cost of a pack of cigarettes is now about $5, so a two-packs-a-day smoker will pay $304 per month and $3,650 per year to support his or her habit. This is money that could be stashed away in a savings account and spent on a home, a car, or a dream vacation. Americans often have inadequate savings accounts, and they could improve their finances by paying saved cash rather than charging the cost of purchases on credit cards. (3) The most important reason to stop smoking, though, is to improve health. Smokers are more likely than nonsmokers to suffer from colds, headaches, and insomnia. A third of smokers complain of debilitating fatigue, chronic bronchitis, and other respiratory disorders. Worst of all, though, smoking causes a host of deadly diseases; in fact, it is a major cause of heart attack, stroke, and cancer. Every year, 400,000 people die from tobacco-related diseases. (4) Smoking causes bad breath and yellows teeth. It also leaves a foul odor in the hair, clothing, and surroundings of not only the person who smokes but also everyone in close proximity to the smoker. Smoking ages the skin, too, making smokers look older than their years. (5) Because smoking harmful in all of these respects, the best thing smokers can do for themselves and their loved ones is quit. They should try all of options available, such as nicotine patches and smoking cessation programs. Quitting is difficult thing to do, but it's worth it. -Proofread paragraph 5 for missing words. Select the correct list of words missing from this paragraph.

Proofreading is most effective when you

For each of the following sets (subject, audience, and purpose), select the letter of the most appropriate choice for the blank. -Subject: techniques for organizing class materials Audience: people who lack organizational skills Purpose: _____________________________________

For each pair of sentences, select the letter of the sentence with more exact language.

Select the letter of the correctly punctuated sentence. -_____

Select the letter of the complete subject and the complete verb in each sentence. -Our quartet rehearses on Saturdays.

Select the letter of the sentence that uses the semicolon correctly. -_____

For each of the following sets of subject, audience, and purpose, select the appropriate answer for the blank. -Subject: steps to follow to obtain a passport for international travel Audience: _____________________________________ Purpose: to explain the procedure for obtaining a passport

For each pair of sentences, select the letter of the sentence with more concise language.

The following group of sentences can be arranged and written as a paragraph. Select the letter of the sentence that would be the best topic sentence. -_______

Read the essay below. Then, select the letter of the correct answer for each of the questions that follow. An Old Skill for a New Technological World (1) People who will have to work with computers, either at school or on the job, will have to do a lot of typing on a computer keyboard. (2) They can try to use their two index fingers to peck out the characters they need to form words and sentences, or they can take the time to learn how to touch-type, which involves memorizing the positions of all of the keys and then using each of the ten fingers to press various keys without looking at them. (3) The second method is certainly the more preferable of the two options. (4) Learning to touch-type is a valuable skill for several reasons. (5) The ability to touch-type will, most importantly, save a lot of time. (6) Hunting for and tapping out letters using only two fingers is clumsy, frustrating, and slow. (7) Touch-typing, however, allows a computer user to type many times faster. (8) With practice, as the skill becomes more automatic, the typist's fingers fly over the keys, generating documents and messages much more efficiently. (9) Learning to touch-type also prevents distractions that interrupt the flow of thought required during writing. (10) People who do not know how to touch-type must use a portion of their attention to search for the right keys. (11) For touch-typists, however, typing is an automatic skill that requires no conscious thought, so they are free to concentrate on expressing their ideas. (12) Finally, acquiring touch-typing skill will reduce strain on the hands, fingers, arms, eyes, and neck. (13) While the two-fingered approach to typing requires that hands stay lifted up in the air so that all keys will remain visible, touch-typing allows the computer user to rest his or her arms and hands on the desk or machine and make use of smaller, more efficient finger movements. (14) Therefore, the hands, fingers, and arms do not get tired as easily. (15) The eyes of touch-typists do not have to move constantly back and forth from the keyboard to the computer screen; they can stay focused on the screen. (16) Because the head does not need to bend forward to see the keys, strain on the neck and upper back is lessened or eliminated. (17) For all of these reasons, computer-users should invest a little time, effort, and money into completing a touch-typing course. (18) After a few months of practice, they will be glad that they learned a skill that will benefit them the rest of their lives. -Which of the following sentences is the topic sentence of the last body paragraph?

Select the letter of the sentence in which all of the adjectives and adverbs are correct. -_____

For each of the following questions about the six proofreading strategies presented in Chapter 8, select the letter of the correct answer for the blank. -Proofreading is most effective when you _____________ revising your draft.

Select the letter of the sentence that uses the semicolon correctly. -_____

For each pair of sentences, select the letter of the sentence with more exact language.

Select the letter of the sentence in which all of the apostrophes are used correctly. -_____

An error you make two, three, or more times is called a(n)

Select the letter of the group in which all of the words are spelled correctly. -____

Select the letter of the sentence that uses the semicolon correctly. -_____