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Essays, Essays, Essays
Do not expect to learn your grammar mechanics in the freshman English courses.
By the time you get there, the teacher might already expect you to know comma splices from sentence fragments from fused sentences. It really depends on the course and the curriculum. Sometimes the teacher will go over common mistakes and sometimes the focus will go directly onto essay writing. It can never hurt to learn these things in advance. Often though, a teacher will go over the more common and more serious errors in the basic English courses because grammar mechanics are usually a major factor in what they are going to base the grading scale on. Do not let me scare you, but a major grammatical mistake can drop you an entire grade (depending on the teacher and grading scale!)
Learn your grammar and mechanics early, and practice often
This seems very obvious, however, it is important to note that you need to have working confidence with the English language before you get to college. Obviously, you cannot wait until English 101 to learn the basics of verbs and nouns. So why wait to get there to learn about comma usage and punctuation errors? The more you know before you get there, the better. It is much easier to review these things with the teacher then to try to scramble and learn them at the same time as you should be learning writing style. Besides, as I will explain later on, if you have learned the basics well enough, then you could possibly even test out of the basic English classes all together.
Personal note
I learned this the hard way going into English 101 without having any inclination of the difference between a comma splice and a fused sentence. My idea of grammar mechanics was limited, at best. Fortunately, the teacher reviewed these major mechanical errors before any serious grading took place. If not, I would certainly have been lost. What lesson did I learn here? I should have made more of an effort to learn and use grammar mechanics so that I could remember them with confidence when I got to English 101.
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