Book review
| Title | Book Review: Longman Academic Writing Series 5: Essays to Research Paper |
| Author | Olivia P. M. Laurena |
| Page | 82-83 |
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| Title | Book Review: Longman Academic Writing Series 5: Essays to Research Paper |
| Author | Olivia P. M. Laurena |
| Page | 82-83 |
For English language learners in the university level, their skill in writing is one of the many important skills they need to learn and master, more specifically their academic writing skills. As students progress in developing their writing skills, the level of difficulty with regard to vocabulary, writing structures, and the process of writing compositions gets more and more complicated, formal and, in most cases, compositions become much longer. For some English language learners, the degree of difficulty can be doubled when instruction of academic writing is not thorough, detailed, or comprehensive.
Longman Academic Writing Series 5 is the fifth of a series of academic writing books published by Pearson Education. The target audience of this book are university-level learners of the English language. In the book series, the level of instruction progresses as students learn to write sentences, paragraphs, essays, and longer texts like research papers.
Book 5 focuses on academic writing instruction transitioning from essays (short compositions) to research papers (long compositions). It provides students the knowledge on and techniques in writing compositions, particularly academic texts, and allow them to develop their English academic writing skills and expand the vocabulary knowledge. The book is a valuable resource for both teachers in providing a comprehensive instruction on academic writing, and for students in helping to write academic compositions, specifically essays and research papers.
The book comprises of nine chapters. Each chapter is logically structured with different parts that give a detailed instructional approach to writing a specific writing genre— expository essays, classification, process, cause/effect, definition, problem/solution, summaries, argumentative essays, and lastly, research papers. Writing models or example compositions are presented in each chapter to introduce students to the structure of the particular type of composition. In addition, skill-specific exercises or practices are included to help students apply the concepts being learned and have a hands-on experience in using the concepts as they complete the writing assignments. Vocabulary practices are also included in the book. The vocabulary is based on the writing models and these sets of vocabulary will be further practiced by the students and then used in their writing assignments.
The chapters contain instructions and strategies in writing the specific writing genre. The contents are presented in a way that follows the process of writing compositions. This is believed to be a rational approach as it provides students with step-by-step instructions as
they complete the tasks assigned to them. Specific grammar concepts are presented in each chapter depending on the relevance and connection of the grammar concepts to the genre being learned. Moreover, further information and explanation is given for the grammar concepts as well as on how to write the composition in the appendices listed at the end of the book. Finally, the writing practices are given as writing assignments, wherein students can apply what they have learned in the chapter. These writing assignments are provided with step-by-step instructions so that students will be familiar with and practice the writing process as they do the tasks for each chapter.
The structure that the author employed in writing this book follows a pattern that is easy for students to follow as well as for teachers to provide instructions. It is structured as such so as to deliver a logical approach to giving instructions for writing and providing additional and equally essential concepts that will aid students in writing academic compositions. For some academic writing books, the focus is more on the structure of the text, the process of writing it and the formatting. Longman Academic Writing Series 5 is a book on academic writing focusing on essays and research papers. It, likewise, provides language instruction with the inclusion of vocabulary learning parts, grammar concept presentations, explanations, and practices. With these additional instructions, students not only learn the technicalities of academic writing but also they are imparted with the linguistic concepts that English language learners need to develop their language skills in a more comprehensive scope.
Overall, Longman Academic Writing Series 5 is a comprehensive resource for learning academic English writing that will be highly useful for university-level English language learners who will be required to write essays and research papers as part of their academic requirement. The author’s design of this book highly considers the logical presentation of the writing concepts with regard to how students will effectively learn towrite academic compositions. The inclusion of vocabulary learning as well as grammar concepts makes this book suitable for learning both the technical aspects as well as the linguistic aspects of academicwriting.
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