Proust and the Squid is one of my favorite books and is a “must read.” The subtitle of this book is “the story and science of the reading brain.”  It’s unique title refers to the famous 19th Century French author, Marcel Proust.  Proust’s most famous work is Remembrance of Things Past (which has now been retranslated as In Search of Lost Time).  This highly influential, massive work — 7 volumes and over a million words — was written in a stream of consciousness style.  Proust talks about a complex mix of things — creativity, social class, sexuality, among others — but it his insightful personal mediations on the experience of reading that Dr. Wolf alludes to in the title and quotes from in the text.  The remarkable neurology of the squid and its astonishing adaptability became a major post-WWII area of study.  The juxtaposition of the two in the title, along with the subtitle, gives you a clue what the book is about: what the experience of reading does to our brains.

There is a lot of hard science about what happens to the brain when you read in this book.  And there is a lot of historical research about the historical development of the written word from many cultures.  And Dr. Wolf manages to correlate the two.  She also provides graphic maps of the different parts of the brain involved in reading.  It is quite an eye opener to see that the brain uses different parts to read Chinese characters than it does to read English letters. The amount covered in such a small book is simply dazzling.  

Far from being dry, however, the book has a warm, upbeat tone.  Dr. Wolf is clearly a person who not only is a dedicated reading researcher, she herself is an avid reader and she shares her enjoyment.  She also shares her motivation for her life’s work:  her son is dyslexic.  There is a lot about the how a dyslexic brain differs from a “normal” one.

Reading physical changes the brain.  Dr. Wolf points out that reading is not “natural” and that because of the brain’s plasticity, reading has the effect of physically expanding the brain and its complex connections.  

You will come away from this book realizing how incredibly good for you it is to read.  It was written in 2007 — before smartphones and their accompanying addiction and elimination of reading for many people in their lives.  

So much as happened since this book was written — most notably, the proliferation of smartphones and the further development of addictive technology, especially social media.  And there been so much research since this book was written.  Dr. Wolf. has continued to be an active researcher and her subsequent work confirms the tragic effects of not reading and the damage to people’s brains and personalities that the screen-based life has inflicted.

English for Everyone: Phrasal Verbs: An ESL Book of Over 1,000 English Phrasal Verbs in Use

Phrasal Verbs: An ESL Book from DK

s a much-needed workbook that provided both a good introduction to phrasal verbs and some good practice exercises for more than 1,000 commonly used examples.  

There are six sections of different lengths with different usage topics:  “Describing People and Things,” “Everyday Life,” “Work and School,”” Home and Fee Time,” “Communication,” and “Emotions and Situations.”  There is one additional section, “Common Verbs,” which has the most common verbs that are combined with particles to form phrasal verbs.  

Each section is divided into individual topic lessons of four pages each on topics such as “Clothing,”Making Plans,” and “Business. The book’s exercise pages are clearly formatted and not too difficult.  This is the book’s strong point.

The book’s weak point is that it mentions that phrasal verbs often have multiple meanings, depending on the context, but does not delve into them at all.  This is related to the most challenging part of teaching ESL vocabulary:  multiple-meaning words, also called multiple-use words.  

Explaining even seemingly simple multiple-use words takes a great deal of time in a lesson and would have made the book much larger and more complex.  This is probably the reason why the authors chose to not elaborate on this aspect of phrasal verbs.  

But as a basic introduction to phrasal verbs, Phrasal Verbs: An ESL Book succeeds well and is recommended.

 A Long Walk to Water, by Linda Sue Park

This slim (121 pages) volume will leave a much larger impression on you.  Written in 2010 by Linda Sue Park, the Newbery Medal winner for her 2001 A Single Shard, it is a novelized version of a true story, set in the 1985 civil war in South Sudan.

It is told as two stories presented in alternating sections with different colored type, both set in the same place, but from the points of view of two different eleven years olds: Nya, a girl in 2008 and Salva, a boy in 1985.

The girl’s life is harsh, as she much trudge for two hours twice a day to get water for her family, but the boy’s is harrowing, a visceral, gritty saga of pain and survival in the chaos of war.  

Salva, is in fact, a real person, and the hardships he endured were faced by what came to be known as “the lost boys of Sudan,” who were separated from their families and were forced to flee across the African continent as refugees, facing wild animals, vicious armed rebels, and starvation.

The two stories come together in the end in a surprising and emotionally moving way.  

 A Long Walk to Water has a Lexile rating of 720 and can be enjoyed by both adults and kids around grade 4 and above.  I highly recommend it as it is highly uplifting and gives a strong statement about not giving up.  It is also instructional about Africa and conveys an important lesson about empathy for others. 

You can order the book from either of our Affiliate Bookstores, Better World Books or Barnes & Noble using the links on the blog or on the BLS Education Library page: https://blseducation.com/bls-education-library.

If you have any questions, you can email me at blseducationlibrary@gmail.com. 

I hope you enjoy A Long Walk to Water!

How to Write an Awesome Paragraph Step-by-Step: An Outstanding Writing Guide

 There are many writing books out there.  How to Write an Awesome Paragraph Step-by-Step is one of the most useful.  It is the companion volume to How to Write a 5-Paragraph Essay Step-by-Step 

It is a slim 90 page book that is extremely well organized.   It breaks a paragraph down into “Topic Sentences,” “Relevant Details,” and then summarizes as “Writing Complete Paragraphs.”

What makes the book so extremely useful is the way it details each part of a paragraph and not only gives examples, it gives exercises in how to improve every aspect of a paragraph, down to individual words.

These exercises are remarkably clear and include graphic organizers and a variety of examples.  For example, under the topic of “Upgrading Your Topic Sentence,” it gives “Five quick ways to add interest.”  It gives examples and has exercises.  There are many other specific points, including transition words, how to replace weak words, adding rhetorical questions, and transition words.  There are several pages about writing effective closing sentences.

All in all, How to Write an Awesome Paragraph Step-by-Step is an outstanding writing book. It could benefit native speaker writers, but is simple and clear enough for even a beginning English learner.

You can order this book from The BLS Education Library' Bookstore via our Affiliation with Better World Books with free shipping worldwide.  Please click on this link https://blseducation.com/bls-education-library and you will find the ordering link.  You can also email us with any questions you may have at blseducationlibrary@gmail.com.

How to Write a 5-Paragraph Essay Step-by-Step : A very helpful book for students, teachers, and parents

 

Most English non-fiction writing is a form of expository writing.   Though there have been some criticisms of this point of view, the five paragraph essay is the basis for nearly all English expository writing.   It is also the form of most writing tests.  

When I was a high school student, I had a Composition teacher who really emphasized outlining your point into the 5 paragraph essay form.  She made it an automatic process for me and it has served me my entire life.  

How to Write a 5-Paragraph Essay Step-by-Step is the best book I have found for instilling that “automatic process” of organizing your essay idea into the 5 paragraph essay form.  It is a simple, straightforward, 100 page guide that uses templates to teach how to organize and outline your essay.    Templates work well for both 1st and 2nd language English students.  I use this book to teach expository writing or prepare students for writing tests.  I teach EFL and find that it works very well for my online students.  

A criticism of the book is that it does not include example essays or answers, but this also contributes to its small size and price.   

You can order this book from The BLS Education Library' Bookstore via our Affiliation with Better World Books with free shipping worldwide.  Please click on this link https://blseducation.com/bls-education-library  and you will find the ordering link.  You can also email us with any questions you may have at blseducationlibrary@gmail.com.

ENGLISH LANGUAGE STUDIES & INSTRUCTION

ENGLISH LANGUAGE STUDIES & INSTRUCTION

ENGLISH LANGUAGE STUDIES & INSTRUCTION