English Teachers Need Better Writing Texts

English teachers seem constantly to be looking for writing texts that have more to offer than the standard writing guides, writing handbooks, style books, readers, grammar texts, etc. that seem to be the only type of material available to help them teach writing-an extremely difficult task. This book, English Teachers Need Better Writing Texts, identifies some of the problems English teachers have in the teaching of writing and explains some new approaches that can be used effectively in the teaching of writing. These new approches are used in a writing text, Writing Insights, also written by Paul Aamot (published by and available from Authorhouse) and this book explains these new approaches with explanations and replications of pages from Writing Insights. So, this is a book about a book. It provides some explanations of the exercises in Writing Insights that enable students to experience the same editing experiences that professional writers encounter every time they write or read and edit what they or some other professional writers have written. Students need assignments that will help them become writer-readers as well as reader-readers, that will "modify their behavior" insofar as writing is concerned, that will give them the same "sentence sense" that professional writers have, that will enable them to, in a sense, "get religion" insofar as writing is concerned. They need to be guided through a writing text like Writing Insights. Simply put, both teachers and students of writing need a book like Writing Insights. This book, English Teachers Need Better Writing Texts, will inform English teachers about these new effective ways to teach writing.

Paul Aamot was an English teacher for 35 years---13 years in a senior high school and 22 in a small college. During that time he taught many writing classes. Most of the writing texts that were available did not seem to be very helpful. Most of them were writing handbooks, writing guides, grammar texts, readers, etc. that did not seem to address directly and clearly many of the problems student confronted as writers. Directions and requirements for punctuation, for instance, were scattered throughout hundreds of pages in guides and handbooks. Many punctuation requirements were presented in almost incomprehensible grammatical directives, like "place commas around all non-restrictive participle phases" or "use commas after introductory adverb clauses." Using these grammatical terms often seemed intimidating to students, so Mr. Aamot began creating handouts that made punctuation and other aspects of writing more understandable to students. These handouts ultimately resulted in the text, Writing Insights, (also published by Authorhouse) which enables students to examine and identify the structure of every sentence they write, just as professional writers do.