Originally Posted by
Snow Dog
I thought ISS taught you only how to underline titles and number paragraphs. A competent level in English, as with Maths, was expected on joining.
No, my ISS had, as its first block, a book on English usage. It was one where you read a pane, moved on and answered some questions and, if they were correct, moved on. If you got a section wrong, such as mis-identifying a subordinate clause, then you went back to an earlier pane that you had not previously covered and started over.
Beside SW (now DW) they made great play of the over adequate semi-colon, the adequate comma and the mis-related pronoun. Certainly the latter was an essential lesson.