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Focus On Writing Paragraphs And Essays Instructor's Annotated Edition
Focus on Writing: Paragraphs and Essays, new from best-selling authors Laurie Kirszner and Stephen Mandell, is their most accessible writing text yet. Focus on Writing engages students visually, demonstrates concepts with color and highlighting, and offers students more grammar support than any comparable text on the market. This text provides the same excellent coverage that Kirszner and Mandell's popular workbook series, Foundations First: Sentences and Paragraphs and Writing First: Practice in Context are known for, while also responding to students' changing needs and realities. It offers more step-by-step coverage of the writing process and more diverse examples, exercises, and models, making it both student-friendly and thorough. Working clearly and simply to engage and motivate students, Focus on Writing empowers students to become capable writers and self-editors who are prepared for college composition.
699 pages, Hardcover
First published January 3, 2007
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371 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 22, 2024
Tempted to but probably should not tag the topics used in the example paragraphs, to reduce confusion about my bookshelves.
Focus on Writing is thoroughly a college textbook, and it is only somewhat useful outside of a college/university environment. Firstly, it focuses on the style of writing where my English teacher insisted that any/every paragraph MUST be at least five sentences, a practice that fiction and casual writing generally does NOT follow. (Ironically, most of the non-example paragraphs in this book are not and do not follow the "TEST"* tool, since it's specifically instructional vs. talking broadly about a topic.) Secondly, the pages are perforated like a workbook, which normally isn't done for books intended to be kept in pristine condition on the bookshelf forever. Thirdly, each chapter includes worksheet-style problems to help demonstrate the chapter's topic, although I don't know how useful that is without a teacher/professor to check the work, since the prior owner wrote some VERY wrong answers in the handful of completed exercises. (Fourthly, though the first clue, is the very first chapter is just about getting oriented in college, which isn't *specifically* helpful for writing, other than maybe helping one get to class on time.) Therefore, I can't recommend this to anyone who isn't actively pursuing English college coursework, except as a free option for whoever finds this in the free library where I return this (the main reason I read it in the first place).
Don't get me wrong; it's helpful! It's just confusing and a *little* repetitive for self-study, besides not having the answers to the exercises to check against. Also, the entirety of Unit 2 feels like it copy-pastes the chapter nine times(!) and just changes what type of paragraph is being discussed. Unit 4 is the most useful-sounding section, on writing a research paper, and Units 5 through 8 are good remedial instruction for those who didn't do well in grade school English or are learning English as a second language (especially Chapter 33: Grammar and Usage for ESL Writers). Lastly, and I don't know why LASTLY, Chapter 37 is about Reading Critically (would have been helpful earlier for the chapters on doing research and avoiding plagiarism!), though it's nice having the example essays in Chapter 38 to dissect. Overall, this book is designed for college work and doesn't have nearly as much to offer outside of the classroom.
*Topic Sentence (for paragraphs)/Thesis Statement (for essays)
Evidence
Summary Statement
Transitions (between sentences)
Focus on Writing is thoroughly a college textbook, and it is only somewhat useful outside of a college/university environment. Firstly, it focuses on the style of writing where my English teacher insisted that any/every paragraph MUST be at least five sentences, a practice that fiction and casual writing generally does NOT follow. (Ironically, most of the non-example paragraphs in this book are not and do not follow the "TEST"* tool, since it's specifically instructional vs. talking broadly about a topic.) Secondly, the pages are perforated like a workbook, which normally isn't done for books intended to be kept in pristine condition on the bookshelf forever. Thirdly, each chapter includes worksheet-style problems to help demonstrate the chapter's topic, although I don't know how useful that is without a teacher/professor to check the work, since the prior owner wrote some VERY wrong answers in the handful of completed exercises. (Fourthly, though the first clue, is the very first chapter is just about getting oriented in college, which isn't *specifically* helpful for writing, other than maybe helping one get to class on time.) Therefore, I can't recommend this to anyone who isn't actively pursuing English college coursework, except as a free option for whoever finds this in the free library where I return this (the main reason I read it in the first place).
Don't get me wrong; it's helpful! It's just confusing and a *little* repetitive for self-study, besides not having the answers to the exercises to check against. Also, the entirety of Unit 2 feels like it copy-pastes the chapter nine times(!) and just changes what type of paragraph is being discussed. Unit 4 is the most useful-sounding section, on writing a research paper, and Units 5 through 8 are good remedial instruction for those who didn't do well in grade school English or are learning English as a second language (especially Chapter 33: Grammar and Usage for ESL Writers). Lastly, and I don't know why LASTLY, Chapter 37 is about Reading Critically (would have been helpful earlier for the chapters on doing research and avoiding plagiarism!), though it's nice having the example essays in Chapter 38 to dissect. Overall, this book is designed for college work and doesn't have nearly as much to offer outside of the classroom.
*Topic Sentence (for paragraphs)/Thesis Statement (for essays)
Evidence
Summary Statement
Transitions (between sentences)
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews