Reviews for 40 Model Essays: A Portable Anthology

The average rating for 40 Model Essays: A Portable Anthology based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-08-17 00:00:00 Ed Solomon This book has many facets. It is a guide to understanding the writing process-- how a writer can think about crafting an essay, or argument, or speech, or any other piece of writing. As much about the entire process of writing and reading as it is about thinking, 40 Model Essays explores how rhetoric is an effective tool. The essay models serve as a way to teach how reading and writing are interlinked and connected, how style and form can be tools for success . We become better writers through critical reading, thinking deeply about how a writer constructs a passage and builds to their purpose. These essays serve as examples to improving one's own skill. 40 Model Essays is also a brilliant resource for any high school students who are, or plan to be, in any type of Advanced Placement class, as the focus is on specific forms of essays that they will surely encounter once in college. The essays included are from a wide collection of respected authors from various time periods'David Sedaris, E.B. White, Amy Tan, George Orwell, Virginia Woolf, Martin Luther King, Jr, Jonathan Swift, to name a few. The essays are divided into various modes'such as description, narrative, classification, process analysis, cause and effective, etc'with specific focus questions on meaning, purpose and audience, method and language. There are also tips for writing essays in these various forms, as well as sample topics for practice. A glossary with definitions of various rhetorical terms is in the back of the book. Sometimes we read, but we don't really "read" read. This is a book that gets anyone who is interested at all in the writing process to think about how argument is developed, and to dig deeper into the reading process. As much as it is a helpful resource for students, it is equally helpful for instructors who are teaching AP level classes. One other beauty of this book is simply that it helps you think about writing and reading in a new, insightful way.

Review # 2 was written on 2009-04-15 00:00:00 Gary Hendershot This collection of essays is meant for a professor to read from and teach to their students. It was very intriguing to read what are to be the "model" essays and what can be taught from them. Some of the best essays I've read, a lot of them I read formerly in my first year of college.