Author Description

I've purchased several expensive books, combed the library system & spent hours online looking for a way to replicate my 4 years in A.P. English for my homeschooling kids. This magical little book is by far the easiest to apply to homeschooling formats, the most thorough, & far & away the cheapest solution. I can't rave about it enough.Don't be put off by reviews that call Payne's little book boring. It's not MTV, certainly, but it's succinct & gets right down to business in a chatty style. The examples are dated, true, but teens are more willing to properly evaluate the arguments for or against, say, drag racing (a puzzling social problem to them) than more volatile modern issues that kick in a more knee-jerk emotional response. The dated examples are quaint, not distracting. They don't detract from lessons.Essays can be excruciatingly formulaic or they can blend. In Payne's words, "fact with imagination, knowledge with feeling, never giving itself over wholly to one or the other. But its purpose is always the to express an opinion." Learning the format & developing elegant, personal style is what this gem is all about. A book that combines an all-in-one guide to constructing an essay--as opposed to a report or a manual--combined with a useful style section is hard to find. It's funny, too. Her crusade against the passive voice, "A Plan For Self-Protection" is a good "At this extreme, passive voice aquires a peculiar aura of its own, a subtle undertone of ah-how-sweet-&-sad-&-strange the world is (always pleasing to the young, & to the young writer almost irresistable). Resist it. It's just secretarial prose with its face all dressed up but still going nowhere."Thoughtful questions at the end of each short chapter help with comprehension. This would be a great text to use in a coop setting, altho it would work well with a student learning alone. Thank goodness it's still available!--Erica Bell (edited)