The former type of exercise directs the students’ attention to the most common vocabulary items from the writing sample, whereas the latter type allows students to practice these items, so they can use them in the writing assignment found at the end of the chapter. To help students build their vocabulary, each chapter includes two types of vocabulary activities- Noticing Vocabulary and Applying Vocabulary. Writing Models, which are adapted from authentic sources such as magazines, journals, and newspapers, can give students a better understanding of the type of rhetorical genre addressed in the chapter. At the same time, the Objectives are directed towards the learner (i.e., “In this chapter, you will learn to…”), which allows students to draw a clear picture of the academic writing skills they will master by the end of the chapter.
Each chapter starts with Objectives that I found particularly helpful, as they present the list of skills covered in the chapter and give the teacher a quick overview of instructional goals of the chapter. The activities and exercises are organized in a logical manner by building on each other, which allows the teacher to simply follow the material in the order presented in the chapter. The structure of each chapter is coherent, which enables students see the importance of every step in the process of composing a writing piece. Each of the book’s chapters is nicely organized and follows the same organizational pattern that adopts a step-by-step approach to help the learner gradually develop the skills introduced in the chapter. Looking at each chapter individually, I noticed that the author effectively balanced both theoretical material and practice tasks and activities, both guided exercises and independent writing assignments. Therefore, vocabulary exercises, sections on grammar and sentence structure, and examples illustrating composing skills are all related to the topic of the chapter. In addition, each chapter tends to focus on a particular topic, which is introduced in a model essay at the beginning of the chapter. There are a total of nine chapters each chapter is built around a particular type of essay: expository, classification, process, cause/effect, extended definition, problem/solution, summary/response, argumentative, and research. Thus, this textbook would be particularly helpful to advanced English learners in English for Academic Purposes courses as well as first-year undergraduate students. The unique feature of Level 5-different from the other books in the series-is its focus on academic essays and research papers. As with the other books in the Longman Academic Writing Series, this volume aims at preparing English language learners for academic coursework.
Level 5 in the Longman Academic Writing Series is the most advanced writing textbook in the five-level series. February 2014 – Volume 17, Number 4 Longman Academic Writing Series 5: Essays to Research Papers