BOOK REVIEW (TEACHING WRITING)

The reviewer has read about five books during extensive reading class. Part 1 of e-book, Technique for College Writing by Kathleen Muller Moore and Susie Lan Cussel, which is discussed by my group focuses in talking about how write and academic essay with a good thesis statement. Chapter 1 of this book tells about the components of an academic essay. Chapter 2 talks about the method of making a good thesis statement for essays and three components of a thesis statement. Furthermore, chapter 3 discuss about two specific critical thinking techniques—observation and abstraction—that are central to thesis statement development. Whereas, chapter 4 explains about an arguments that require support the thesis statement in making an essay. Next e-book is Teaching Academic Writing: A Toolkit for Higher Education by Caroline Coffin.et.al. I focused in chapter 6 that discusses about how technology can be used in a variety of ways to facilitate students’ control of academic writing, which is the applications can be basic or complex. Other, e-book is Lazy Virtues: Teaching Writing in the Age of Wikipedia by Robbert E. Chumming. I focused in chapter 2 that explains about a Wikipedia writing assignment for the composition classroom. This book provides a practical plan for incorporating wiki writing into the composition classroom. Next e-book is Teaching Academic Writing in European Higher Education by Lennart Björk, Gerd Bräuer, Lotte Rienecker, and Peter Stray Jörgensen. Chapter 1 tells about getting started in academic writing in the first year of a university education which starts with a case study showing some of the experiences of a student trying to write her first scholarly term paper. The last e-book is Nonfiction Mentor Text: Teaching Informational Writing through Children’s Literature, K-8 by Lynne F. Dorfman and Rose Chapelli. In reading this book, I focused at chapter 5 which talks about writing to persuade which gives the best strategy for student to have opinions, to be passionate about this opinion, and defend them with strong, well thought out and elaborated arguments.

All of the books have interesting topic to be discuss, however I really interest in a book that written by Lynne F Dorfman and Rose Chapelli, writing to persuade. This book focuses on developing opinions of students and wants students who have opinions to be fanatic about these opinions, and to support them with strong, well thought out and elaborated arguments. It will be interesting if the students can persuade the reader by their arguments. In her book, Rose want the students discovering arguments by writing down in a convincing way rather than just talking. Because it can help students come to the understanding the persuade means to convince someone to think or act in a certain way.  She explains the method in writing to persuade various enough that started from the easiest one until the more complicated one. An example of each method is given by her that make the materials is clear enough. By reading this book a college student will get much information about how to write persuasive essay. This book also provides the guidance to the students to be able to write an persuasive essay, that is the reason I why I like this book.

Academic essay is the commonly assigned essay format that it provides a formal structure for presenting an argument in terms of writing. This book can be used as references for writing persuasive essay. Before students begin to write persuasive essay, they must consider about how to make a good thesis statement and how critical thinking influences in producing a good thesis statement. Reading part 1 (Pp 3-128) of e-book, Technique for College Writing by Kathleen Muller Moore and Susie Lan Cussel will be useful for them as starting point to write academic writing. Kathleen that is the University of California Riverside, explains about the history of academic essay in the first chapter. It discusses the importance of thesis statement, its formation and the elements of an academic essay. Then, in the second chapter it explains more about the tree parts of thesis statement. In other words, the second chapter explains more detail about the thesis statement. In the third chapter explains about the critical thinking for developing thesis statement. In the fourth chapter explains about how to handle the burden of proof of the thesis statement. This books is really helpful to create an effective essays because it explain more about how formulate a working thesis statement.

Teaching Academic Writing in European Higher Education book from University of Applied Sciences, Erfurt, Germany found out that writing an academic paper needed more skillful writing ability which encountered some new things such as summarizing, paraphrasing, and quoting. This book uses simple language that is easy to be understood by the readers. Here the author gives an example clearly about the student that is still confused about academic writing. From the example we know that many college students still do not know about academic writing and this book gives the explanation about how academic essay is very important for college students. So for students who still confused about academic writing I suggest to read this book.

Technology can be used to facilitate or improve students’ academic writing. One of the useful technologies is computer. Computers can help students to develop their academic writing skills (Coffin, at Teaching Academic Writing Toolkit for Higher Education 2003). Since there are many applications on the computers students are easy to use it. For instance is by using computer conferencing as media in developing students’ argument skills. Besides, students can share their writing to correct by other students. As a result, teaching learning process run well and effective. We also can use internet to improve our writing skill. Since internet provides with numerous writing resources. This book is really helpful for teacher in using computers as media in writing class. Not only for the teachers, students can also use this book as their guidance in maximize the use of computer in writing learning process.

Nowadays, technology can improve student’s ability in learning process. Teachers can use technology as media for teaching and learning process. Media refers to websites that is accessible in Internet and provides the opportunity for people to interact. Wikipedia, for instance, is one of the websites that is very popular used and accessed by people in the world. It can be used as teaching learning process media that provides a good chance for the writing class students to increase their ability and confidence in producing a good essay. After the students make an academic writing that contains thesis statement and persuasion form, time to publish their writing. Robbert E. Chumming in Lazy Virtues: Teaching Writing in the Age of Wikipedia explains more detail about how to Wikipedia writing assignment for the composition classroom. Teachers have to try to apply this method in writing class activity because it is such kind of high motivation that teachers give for the students to publish their writing in Wikipedia.