The art of reviewing a book:Some useful tips (PART 3) [Archives:2005/906/Education]
Dr S Mohanraj
Faculty of Education
Taiz University, Taiz
In the last two parts we have seen some of the basic principles a reviewer should bear in mind, and what tasks should a learner perform in the class. A small suggestion has also been offered to encourage the students to write reviews. In this section we shall look at the teacher's job. Let us be very brief, for teaching like life has variety and each one of us may do our jobs differently. There is no single method proven to be universally good or bad. Hence what is said here needs to be taken more as a suggestion rather than a recommendation.
A learner while reviewing a book is expected to produce the review in six steps. These steps have been enumerated in some detail in the previous write up. As teachers, it is our duty to facilitate the learners to complete each of these six tasks as successfully as possible.
1. The first step in writing a review relates to stating the title. Here we need to make it clear that the title as given in a review differs from the bibliographic entry. It may be useful to introduce to our learners style manuals. Copies of MLA Style Sheet (Modern Language Association) could be made available or books with bibliographic entries could be provided to students. Students could make a comparative study of the two types of entries and make a list of similarities and differences. You could use this e.g. to begin with:
Bibliographic entry: Lewis, M (2002) The Lexical Approach – The State of ELT and a Way Forward, London, Thomson Heinle.
Review entry: The Lexical Approach – The State of ELT and a Way Forward, Michael Lewis, London, Thomson Heinle: 2002 (pp viii + 196) ISBN 090671799 x [price not stated]
To help your learners, you could ask them to look at the order of entries, punctuation marks used, details of information etc. Practice can be provided using books they are familiar with, perhaps the books that are prescribed to them. It would be more helpful, if this exercise is carried out in pairs and groups for discussion makes learning better.
2. The second point talks about the relevance of the book under review. This would perhaps be difficult for the learners to arrive at. Help the learners read reviews of books published in journals and magazines, and identify parts which relate to the relevance. In the previous section (part II) of this write-up some reasons which could prompt a person to write a review are suggested. The list is not exhaustive. By undertaking the type of exercise mentioned, learners can come out with an inventory of reasons and the list can be formidable. Collect some reviews published and share them among your learners. Let them read these reviews and become familiar with the format and different parts of the review. This could once again be a group task. A review could be shared among six to eight learners for analysis and discussion.
3. The third section which should give information about the author is optional. However, in the class, to make the task useful, it would be appropriate to choose authors who are well known and about who we could give some information to the learners. A better task could be ask the learners to look up encyclopedias or surf the net to glean information about some authors. Let them get some information about Keats and Shelley, or Shaw and Galsworthy, Milton and Marlowe. The list of authors we can provide them can come from different fields as well. Some famous names are provided here to help you start the work: Milton, F; Myrdal Gunnar; Kant Emmanuel; Sartre J P; Kafka F; Proust M; Cohelo P; Calvino, I; Ray Bradbury; Jung C; Widdowson H G; Hoyle, F; Bellow, S; Mandela, N; Patai, R; and El Shamy Hasan M. These are names chosen from different fields of work like economics, psychology, science, sociology, criticism, creative writing, ELT and other fields. Once again pair work may be more profitable than students working alone on a task like this. Perhaps this task could even be administered as part of a project work on which the learners can work at home.
4. The fourth section of the review deals with providing a summary. This is in fact an exercise in comprehension. But let us attempt at eliciting learner understanding without our intervention. Let us help our learners with some small stories, essays, and reports (not over two pages) and ask them to read independently and summarize for the whole class. A pool of materials (stories, essays and reports) can be gathered with student cooperation. We could ask each student to bring a story or two (or a piece of some published writing) and this could be pooled and distributed randomly to the students for summarizing. Certain guidelines can be offered to develop summaries (this need not be elaborated here) and later discussed in the class with peer correction.
5. This section deals with offering opinions and comments. In fact, this would be the spill over of the task offered in the previous section (4). When students share their summaries in the class, and their write up is open for discussion, comments would flow in, in abundance. We could monitor this discussion by helping the learners to sift the chaff from the grain. You could sensitize them to identify the relevant points and discard the not very relevant points. Further, a lot of training can be provided in observing the etiquette of group discussion, and using a language that does not hurt others while offering criticism. It is time our learners become familiar with the nuances of the language, for they are at a stage when they need to say good bye to their student lives and enter real life.
6. The last section relates to the writing of the conclusion and offering suggestions on the relevance and usefulness of the book. This is an open exercise, and much depends on the type of book chosen. Perhaps this is best left to the learners to learn on their own.
After reading this, you may have a relevant question to ask. The tasks suggested here take a long time to work through. Do we have the luxury of eternity to teach in our class? And at that one topic on a course? Indeed, the question is relevant, and the following suggestion may help you to some extent.
When we read literature available on the Teaching Writing (called Process Writing), most of the scholars express an opinion that the classroom time should not be utilized for the actual writing. Classroom should provide the inputs, and the actual writing task should happen outside the class either as assignment or a home task. If this is accepted in principle, and the classroom time is used for discussions and sharing views, the tasks suggested here would not occupy more than two weeks of teaching time.
Let us hope to build a new tomorrow.
Bibliography
Mohanraj S (2004), 'Book Review: The Lexical Approach' in Journal of English and Foreign Languages , Number 33, June 2004, Hyderabad, CIEFL (pp. 117-122)
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