[.ca] Evergreen: A Guide to Writing with Readings: Text with ... (ISBN 0618397582)

A very useful text:
We use Susan Fawcett's book 'Evergreen' in writing courses at the community college where I work, as well as in our Tutoring Center (we also use her book 'Grassroots', which is a good companion at the more basic level). Whereas 'Grassroots' is for those who need help writing sentences and with more basic grammar concepts, the 'Evergreen' book is for those who have mastered that level of writing, and are ready to develop more fully structured themes and essays. The first unit of 'Evergreen' reviews the basic concepts of the writing process - what is one writing for? Who is the likely or intended audience? How should a finished paper look? Believe it or not, it is on this last point that so many grades have risen or fallen - a paper can be wonderfully written, but if it is scribbled on scrap paper rather than typewritten and neatly printed, it may suffer in grading, just as a letter from a business will not be as well received if it has spelling errors and problems with formatting. (This is a similar introduction to the 'Grassroots' text.) The second unit looks for explicitly at the paragraph, developing concepts such as coherence, topic sentences, ideas to include and exclude, as well as outlining and revising. The third and fourth units in this book are really the heart of the writing process. In the development of the paragraph, there are different approaches and techniques one can take - the paragraph can be descriptive, narrative, explanatory of a definition, comparison and contrast, persuasive, and a few other means. These lead naturally into the development of the essay, which is generally a series of paragraphs that are linked by a common idea or theme - some of the same processes that go into the development of a paragraph parallel the development of an essay, and many of the same descriptors above apply to paragraph forms, too. The fifth unit extends this kind of essay development by exploring sentence variety, language awareness and consistency in the revision process. Units 6 and 7 are review chapters for grammar concepts, punctuation, and spelling. These are really review areas - they do not go into enough depth or repetition for this to be an introductory text, but rather will assume some familiarity with the concepts being presented. The final section has a collection of reading selections, some from well-known authors and other figures. There are pieces that provide examples for the different kinds of essays described earlier in the book - some pieces are narrative, some are persuasive, some are humourous. This is a good book to use to become a better writer. It is useful in classroom settings, but might also be used for individual study (such as we do in the Tutoring Center).