English Essentials

John Langan's English Essentials offers guidance through the grammar, punctuation, and usage skills needed for success in college and beyond. In short, English Essentials is an efficient, accessible, and helpful guide to mastering practical English skills.

The book is divided into four parts — Part One covers fifteen basic skills; Part Two offers more in-depth information about those and other skills; Part Three presents the essential skills of proofreading, and Part Four covers spelling improvement and dictionary

use. This student-friendly organization and structure makes the book easy to navigate and a flexible guide.Each section provides essential instructions followed by ample

activities to encourage learning in the best possible way: by doing.

John Langan has taught reading and writing at Atlantic Cape Community College near Atlantic City, New Jersey, for over twenty-five years. The author of a popular series of college textbooks on both writing and reading, John enjoys the challenge of developing materials that teach skills in an especially clear and lively way. Before teaching, he earned advanced degrees in writing at Rutgers University and in reading at Rowan University. He also spent a year writing fiction that, he says, "is now at the back of a drawer waiting to be discovered and acclaimed posthumously." While in school, he supported himself by working as a truck driver, a machinist, a battery assembler, a hospital attendant, and an apple packer. John now lives with his wife, Judith Nadell, near Philadelphia. In addition to his wife and Philly sports teams, his passions include reading and turning on nonreaders to the pleasure and power of books. Through Townsend Press, his educational publishing company, he has developed the nonprofit "Townsend Library"—a collection more than thirty new and classic stories that appeal to readers of any age.