SLWIS Newsletter - February 2017 (Plain Text Version)
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BOOK REVIEWS REVIEW OF UNIVERSITY SUCCESS WRITING, TRANSITION LEVEL, WITH MYENGLISHLAB
In the words of the publisher of the book entitled above, University Success is “a three-strand developmental course designed for English language learners transitioning to mainstream academic environments” (back cover). These three strands are oral communication, reading, and writing. The focus of this review will be on writing. Similar to the first two books in the series, the writing book consists of three main parts: Fundamental Writing Skills, Critical Thinking Skills, and Extended Writing. Each part is divided into five units, which correspond to five content areas and focus on different but complementary writing skills. These content areas include sociology, economics, biology, humanities, and environmental engineering. As such, the book integrates content and rhetorical skills, and can, in full or in part, be of help to programs that are of interdisciplinary nature or to compositions classes with students with various academic backgrounds and interests. The organization in each unit of the first two parts of the book follows roughly the same pattern with components broken up as follows:
Because the second part of the book is where it moves from theoretical coverage to a more concrete level, the “Fundamental Skill” in the first part is replaced with “Critical Thinking Skill” here and includes, among other topics, “Distinguishing Facts and Opinions” and “Reading Critically.” The reader need not be overwhelmed by this outline because, other than the contents page at the beginning of the book, the front matter includes a “Key Features” page, meant to be used as a guide to explain what each (sub)section entails, and a comprehensive “Scope and Sequence” page summarizing all the skills targeted by each section in each unit. Other features not mentioned include a “Why it’s Useful” section, which comes after the skills sections outlined above and is meant to explain the relevance and the importance of the skills under discussion. Additionally, depending on the particular research skill, the reader will be pleased with occasional tips in the margins of some pages; cross-references to other parts of the book; and “culture notes,” shedding light on cultural information, which are amusing. The recurring activities and exercises that are helpful in getting the students to collaborate in pair or group work include a “Before You Write” prompt with a list of discussion questions to initiate a conversation and a “Peer Review” prompt with a list of items to direct the task and make it more effective. Finally, the book includes an online support that gives students more opportunities for further practice and self-teach training, and, as such, comes with an access code to the accompanying website. References to online material are spread in several places in each unit. While the electronic material can be done away with in the first two parts, this is not the case in the third part. This is because each unit in the third part barely includes six pages in total, about half of which centers around an interview with an expert in each of the five subject matters, and these interviews are only available online. The only remaining question concerns the order in which the five areas of study are arranged, because there was no explanation given. A more logical progression would either take a historical approach to these academic fields (i.e., starting with humanities, natural sciences, and then social sciences) or would establish a relational link between them (i.e., starting with humanities, social sciences, and then natural sciences). Nonetheless, the book does a decent job of choosing material that is both informative and engaging and pointing out important differences in writing conventions across academic disciplines. Furthermore, it includes helpful visual representations to elaborate on certain points and an accessible writing style that makes a smooth introduction to how writing is done in the respective field. Students reading this book will encounter a number of important skills that are essential to the interrelated processes of reading, research writing, and revision. University Success promotes itself as gearing toward a student population that is in the transitional phase between ESL and mainstream classes, and it can possibly apply equally well to the latter population in a first-year English composition class, for instance. Given that in my own composition classes I have students intending to major in two of the five fields included in this book (economics and biology), I can easily see myself assigning this book the next time I am going to teach. Ahmad A. Alharthi is a doctoral student in English language and rhetoric, and a composition instructor in the Expository Writing Program at the University of Washington. His research interests include discourse analysis, second language writing, and World Englishes. |
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