Helpful votes received on reviews:
100% (17 of 17)
Location: St. Louis, MO United States
In My Own Words:
During my lifetime I have fallen in love with the idiosyncrasies and limitless possibilities of the English language. My forty years as a writer, editor, and teacher (of kindergartners through adults) have helped me to distill the English language to its essentials. I have written and published _Hands-On English_, a concise English handbook that makes grammar visual by using icons to represent pa… Read moreDuring my lifetime I have fallen in love with the idiosyncrasies and limitless possibilities of the English language. My forty years as a writer, editor, and teacher (of kindergartners through adults) have helped me to distill the English language to its essentials. I have written and published _Hands-On English_, a concise English handbook that makes grammar visual by using icons to represent parts of speech. It is now in its second edition.
I also publish two FREE e-mail newsletters. _LinguaPhile_, which is monthly, includes book reviews, questions and answers about English, teaching tips, inspiring quotes, vocabulary enhancers, puzzles, and more. _Acu-Write_, published weekly, addresses common errors in English. You can subscribe on the GrammarAndMore website or by sending an e-mail message to
LinguaPhile-subscribe@yahoogroups.com or Acu-Write-subscribe@yahoogroups.com.
Because I believe that communication is the key to solving the world's problems, I like to help people communicate more effectively.
I also enjoy travel. My most exciting trip was to Kenya and Tanzania. I also enjoyed visiting Machu Picchu in Peru and climbing the mountain that is often shown behind Machu Picchu in photographs.
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Reviews
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Anyone who cares about the future of America should read this book. Author Diane Ravitch is a historian of education. She first encountered "bias and sensitivity review" panels when she served on the National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB) beginning in 1998. Ravitch represents neither the left nor the right. Recognizing that both factions agree that children will be shaped by what they read, she provides an objective -- yet impassioned -- viewpoint. She poses tough questions that society must address if we are to preserve our heritage. Ravitch focuses her attention on textbooks and standardized reading tests. In looking first at the tests, Ravitch includes summaries of… Read more
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_How to Get Your Child to Love Reading_ was conceived when Esmé was staring at a shriveled potato that was sprouting eyes. She wondered, " . . . if I had a potato, nothing but a potato, how could I teach a classroom full of children? Well, I could cut a potato in half. (I can use the paring knife from my own kitchen, right?) We could review fractions. With one half, I could cut a design and do potato prints. We could plant the eyes from the other half of the potato (it can have eyes, right?) and grow more potatoes, charting their growth." The ideas cascade: writing a story about a potato, making a book of potato recipes or potato poems, making potato stamps of all the letters,… Read more
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Although Richard Lederer may be best known for his delightful word play, he is also an eminent authority on English. In _The Miracle of Language_ he writes somewhat more seriously about this language that he loves, inspiring in us a deeper appreciation of our system of communication that we often take for granted. The chapter titled "In Praise of English" makes us grateful that ours is a language that puts so many words at our disposal -- remarkable for their sheer number as well as for their variety. Because English has so freely adopted words from other languages, we often have many choices about how we will express an idea -- whether we will use short words derived from… Read more
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