11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Solid, up-to-date Textbook, June 29, 2007
This review is from: Writing Academic English, Fourth Edition (The Longman Academic Writing Series, Level 4) (Paperback)
Using this textbook for the first time this year, I found it to be both well organized and contain interesting content, which helped pique the students' interest. After spending much time researching potential texts, this one was by and far the best. I only wish it had come with a teacher's edition providing creative suggestions for proceeding through the book (I'm a new teacher). Still, it has allowed me to organize the class into pairs and groups, when I wish, quite well for the practice exercises in order to create a more relaxed and student centered atmosphere. I also recommend alternating between chapters focusing on paragraph/essay and those on sentence structure. Overall I highly recommend it for upper-intermediate/advanced high school or university students. Very well done!
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
You will use this ALL THE TIME, PEOPLE!, February 17, 2011
This review is from: Writing Academic English, Fourth Edition (The Longman Academic Writing Series, Level 4) (Paperback)
Look at the 1, 2, & 3 star reviews. . .those people are commenting primarily on the shipping, or they're unenthusiastic students who have left one-line reviews.
I'm an English instructor. I've taught In 3 different countries, and I currently teach developmental English and English 100-level courses to native speakers and speakers of pidgin, BVE, and various vernaculars. This book is a godsend. I ran across it while in Korea, and I have used it for every class since.
The comma rule simplification in the appendix alone is worth the price of this book. The author breaks all comma rules into 4 basic categories that students can actually understand. Having used books that try to get students to remember 10 + rules for a measly comma, I wish I could kiss the author on the face for making this understandable. It's short enough that students aren't exactly to the REM stage of sleep by the time I'm finished explaining it, but long enough to include all the rules. Some students even actually get it! Hallelujah!
The book also separates organizational tactics (block organization, point-by-point, different types of theses) from grammatical tactics (identifying clauses; frags, ROs, CSs, parallelism; adverbial clauses, etc.), so that you can match chapters to the grammar point - i.e. teach adverbial time clauses with chronological order), or avoid them altogether if you want. The preface offers some suggestions about these types of strategies.
I wish my department would teach with this book, but I don't have tenure so I might as well be begging a wall. If you're contemplating this book or another, get this one.
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A very helpful book for ESL student, September 27, 2007
This review is from: Writing Academic English, Fourth Edition (The Longman Academic Writing Series, Level 4) (Paperback)
It's the book I strongly recommand for ESL student. It helps a lot in writing essay.
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