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Testing Your Grammar provides the most comprehensive review of the grammatical structures of English and is excellent practice for students taking English language proficiency exams. Testing Your Grammar covers all of the major aspects of English grammar -- count and non-count nouns, agreements, verb tense, modals, comparisons, complex cause structures -- that ESL students need to manage in order to improve their English.

With all units enlarged or significantly modified, the new and improved edition of Testing Your Grammar features reworked grammatical explanations and more example sentences so grammar points are easier to understand. Other features of the new edition:

The CondensedESL Writer’s Handbook is a reference work for ESL students who are taking college-level courses. Because its purpose is to provide help with the broad variety of writing questions students may have when working on school assignments, the text focuses on English for Academic Purposes. Unlike other handbooks on the market, this book’s sole purpose is to address the issues of primary importance to language learners.

The Condensed Handbook complements a student writer’s dictionary, thesaurus, and grammar reference book. It would be suitable as a text for an advanced ESL writing course.  

The Condensed Handbook is concise and easily navigated; is accessible, with clear and direct explanatory language; and limits its focus to the grammatical and style aspects of writing and reference material.

            Included as special features in the Condensed Handbook are:

•         The explanatory language is appropriate for ESL students, in contrast to the more complex and idiomatic language of other English handbooks.

•         The level of detail is more manageable for ESL students, compared to what is in other English handbooks.

•         Many of the examples of paragraphs and exercise sentences were written by ESL students; this encourages users of this Handbook to realize that they too can also become effective writers.

•         Additional samples of MLA and APA reference entries.
 
 

The Condensed ESL Writer’s Handbook is a spiral-bound reference work for ESL students who are taking college-level courses. Because its purpose is to provide help with the broad variety of writing questions students may have when working on school assignments, the text focuses on English for Academic Purposes.

The Condensed version is concise and easily navigated; is accessible with clear and direct explanatory language; and limits its focus to the grammatical and style aspects of writing and reference material.

The 2nd Edition of The Condensed ESL Writer’s Handbook has been revised to better align with the exercises in Workbook for The ESL Writer’s Handbook, 2nd Ed.(978-0-472-03726-1). It also features an expanded Section 1 (to include more on pre-writing, drafting, revising, and editing), updated exercise items, and completely revised APA and MLA style guides (featuring MLA, 8th Edition). Overall, this handbook has these special features:

• The topic selection is based on ESL writers’ needs as observed by the authors over many years.
• The coverage of topics is more complete than the limited amount usually provided for ESL writers in first language or L1 handbooks.
• The explanatory language is appropriate for ESL students, in contrast to the more complex and idiomatic language of other English handbooks.
• Many of the text examples and exercise sentences were written by ESL students to help users realize that they too can become effective writers.

 

Originally released in 1980, Lucia Capacchione’s The Creative Journal has become a classic in the fields of art therapy, memoir and creative writing, art journaling, and creativity development. Using more than fifty prompts and vibrantly illustrated examples, Capacchione guides readers through drawing and writing exercises to release feelings, explore dreams, and solve problems creatively. Topics include emotional expression, healing the past, exploring relationships, self-inventory, health, life goals, and more. The Creative Journal introduced the world to Capacchione’s groundbreaking technique of writing with the nondominant hand for brain balancing, finding innate wisdom, and developing creative potential.

This thirty-fifth anniversary edition includes a new introduction and an appendix listing the many venues that have adopted Capacchione’s methods, including public schools, recovery programs, illness support groups, spiritual retreats, and prisons. The Creative Journal has become a mainstay text for college courses in psychology, art therapy, and creative writing. It has proven useful for journal keepers, counselors, and teachers. Through doodles, scribbles, written inner dialogues, and letters, people of all ages have discovered vast inner resources.

Do your sentences sag? Could your paragraphs use a pick-me-up? If so, The Writer’s Diet is for you! It’s a short, sharp introduction to great writing that will help you energize your prose and boost your verbal fitness.

Helen Sword dispenses with excessive explanations and overwrought analysis. Instead, she offers an easy-to-follow set of writing principles: use active verbs whenever possible; favor concrete language over vague abstractions; avoid long strings of prepositional phrases; employ adjectives and adverbs only when they contribute something new to the meaning of a sentence; and reduce your dependence on four pernicious “waste words”: it, this, that, and there.

Sword then shows the rules in action through examples from William Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, Martin Luther King Jr., John McPhee, A. S. Byatt, Richard Dawkins, Alison Gopnik, and many more. A writing fitness test encourages you to assess your own writing and get immediate advice on addressing problem areas. While The Writer’s Diet is as sleek and concise as the writing ideals contained within, this slim volume packs a powerful punch.

With Sword’s coaching writers of all levels can strengthen and tone their sentences with the stroke of a pen or the click of a mouse. As with any fitness routine, adhering to the rules requires energy and vigilance. The results, however, will speak for themselves.