Official Review: Practical Academic Essay Writing Skills ...
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Official Review: Practical Academic Essay Writing Skills ...
[Following is the official OnlineBookClub.org review of "Practical Academic Essay Writing Skills - An International ESL Students English Essay Writing Handbook (Academic Writing Skills)" by Stephen E. Dew.]
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The ability to write a great essay is a skill that is closely linked with academic success. If one has not learned this invaluable skill, it can become an albatross throughout one's academic career. It can be a more difficult skill to acquire if you are writing your essay in English and English is not your first language.
Practical Academic Essay Writing Skills, an International ESL Students Writing Guide by Stephen E. Dew, is a handy primer if you are in need of honing your essay writing skills. It is also a quick, easy read. This book is the second in a series of books covering academic writing skills. The series is intended to address the skills of ESL (English as a Second Language) students. The first work in the series concentrated on paragraph writing skills and the author does not feel it is imperative to read the books in order although he recommends going back to that book if anything about paragraph writing is in question. Dew's intent is for students to download this guide on their laptop or tablet and have it available as a portable tool to be referred back to as needed. This will make more sense when you learn about all the information contained in this compact guide.
Dew begins by explaining the different types of essays and then moves on to discuss essay organization and structure. As you would expect, he suggests that more time spent planning will yield better results. For essays to be logical and well presented, they must have unity and coherence and also contain transition signals, varied sentence openings and maintain parallel structure. If you are wondering what each of these concepts are, you can find a definition of each in the book. I would have liked this book even more if Dew had added to his definitions by giving examples with each. Essay structure is described next - it is composed of the intro paragraph, body paragraph(s), and the concluding paragraph. Dew then explains how to write an essay outline and takes us step by step through the essay writing process.
A feature I love is the review check at the end of each section which asks " Are you still with me?" There are two highlighted links - one takes you back to the start of the section you just finished reading and the other takes you to the author's website which will enable you to send him an email message and ask him a question or leave a comment.
On a less positive note, I sometimes felt mildly annoyed at Dew's non essential editorializing. It felt out of place in a non-fiction book. At one point he states that "you must follow the process OR essays will be uninteresting, confusing, and seemingly immature and you won't receive good grades". At another juncture, he wildly generalizes and states "the problem I find is ESL students want the result without the effort." This is true for all human beings and unnecessary for him to say.
Overall, I found this to be a useful book to improve someone's essay writing skills and I give it 3 out of 4 stars.
***
Buy "Practical Academic Essay Writing Skills - An International ESL Students English Essay Writing Handbook (Academic Writing Skills)" on Amazon
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Practical Academic Essay Writing Skills, an International ESL Students Writing Guide by Stephen E. Dew, is a handy primer if you are in need of honing your essay writing skills. It is also a quick, easy read. This book is the second in a series of books covering academic writing skills. The series is intended to address the skills of ESL (English as a Second Language) students. The first work in the series concentrated on paragraph writing skills and the author does not feel it is imperative to read the books in order although he recommends going back to that book if anything about paragraph writing is in question. Dew's intent is for students to download this guide on their laptop or tablet and have it available as a portable tool to be referred back to as needed. This will make more sense when you learn about all the information contained in this compact guide.
Dew begins by explaining the different types of essays and then moves on to discuss essay organization and structure. As you would expect, he suggests that more time spent planning will yield better results. For essays to be logical and well presented, they must have unity and coherence and also contain transition signals, varied sentence openings and maintain parallel structure. If you are wondering what each of these concepts are, you can find a definition of each in the book. I would have liked this book even more if Dew had added to his definitions by giving examples with each. Essay structure is described next - it is composed of the intro paragraph, body paragraph(s), and the concluding paragraph. Dew then explains how to write an essay outline and takes us step by step through the essay writing process.
A feature I love is the review check at the end of each section which asks " Are you still with me?" There are two highlighted links - one takes you back to the start of the section you just finished reading and the other takes you to the author's website which will enable you to send him an email message and ask him a question or leave a comment.
On a less positive note, I sometimes felt mildly annoyed at Dew's non essential editorializing. It felt out of place in a non-fiction book. At one point he states that "you must follow the process OR essays will be uninteresting, confusing, and seemingly immature and you won't receive good grades". At another juncture, he wildly generalizes and states "the problem I find is ESL students want the result without the effort." This is true for all human beings and unnecessary for him to say.
Overall, I found this to be a useful book to improve someone's essay writing skills and I give it 3 out of 4 stars.
***
Buy "Practical Academic Essay Writing Skills - An International ESL Students English Essay Writing Handbook (Academic Writing Skills)" on Amazon
Latest Review: "The Backside of Nowhere" by Alec Clayton
