Chris M. Anson

Writing is a skill that allows one to communicate with another person. Generally, writing tends to have a theme. If you are writing a treatise on philosophy or law you would use different language, tone, and standards than if you were writing a children’s book or a letter to a friend. Now, letters aren’t really in vogue anymore, but it can also be applied to emails or texts.

The Longman Handbook for Readers and Writers is a guide to effective writing. It is organized in chapters and has exercises that can be done if you are using it for a class. The book is not really something that you should read cover to cover, rather it would be better as a reference guide. For example, if you are bad with commas like I am there is a section on punctuation. Are your sentences too wordy? There is a section on that as well.

The book is quite exhaustive. Since it is a textbook meant for college-level classes this is an excellent thing. On the other hand, it does get a bit ridiculous with trying to foster politically correct papers. I mean, why would you call a young person of the female persuasion a girl when you can call her a pre-woman? Even my spell checker dislikes that word. In any case, I understand that you shouldn’t call someone a derogatory term, but vertically challenged replacing short is a bit much. Perhaps it is meant to pad someone's paper.

Other than that, the book is perfectly serviceable.… (altro)

Web 2.0 tools open a host of possibilities for writing; better writing; creative writing; collaborative writing; personal writing; assigned writing; and, any other type of writing one seems to be able to think of. Writing using pencil and paper predominated; then came the typewriter; then the word processor; now, the web. But simply doing the same writing excercises from previous technologies is not likely to produce any gains in writing quality, amount, or sophistication. All teachers who expect writing products need to re-examine totatly what is possible using the new technolgies from texting to tweeting, to social networking, and on into the mainstream of Web 2.0. Then, it is not just a matter of making the tools available. It is the coaching of this digital generation how to take advantage of the new power within the world of learning. Beach and tem provide many many examples of real writing using the power of technology to actually make an impact on both writing skill and voice among many other qualities that need to be developed. That is why I recommend this book to suggest a variety of techniques. Test the ideas as collaborative teacher librarian classroom teacher teams. What works best? With what kinds of learners. Certainly real projects that naturally involve writing are likely to produce the best results and one-shot trials will not automatically produce the improvements we want. Bottom line. Milk this book for ideas. Add them to your repertoire disocover and share every other idea you can find. This generation deserves it.… (altro)