Fourth Grade Reading Comprehension Success (Sylvan Workbooks) (Language Arts Workbooks) Review

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(More customer reviews)I bought this book after attempting.without success.to help my granddaughter comprehend what she reads.
We spent the summer months doing the activities. which are easy to understand and FUN. At the end of summer.I fell my granddaughter was in a better position to be successful in the 5th grade. She learned HOW to read.
I recommend this book to any parent/caregiver who cannot afford to put their child in the actual Sylvan learning centers.

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Good reading skills are essential not only for fourth-grade academic success, but also for lifelong learning. The teacher-reviewed, curriculum-based activities and exercises in this workbook will help your children catch up, keep up, and get ahead. Best of all, they'll have lots of fun doing it! Some of the great features you'll find inside are:READ BETWEEN THE LINESDo-it-yourself essays on games, camping trips, and more teach kids how to grasp inferences within a story.COMPARE & CONTRASTDiagrams show how to figure out what similar subjects such as "comets or asteroids?" have in common and how to tell them apart.FACT & OPINIONInteresting articles help kids back up opinions with facts from the text on topics such as "Should kids have cell phones?"QUESTION BUSTERSRight There and Think-and-Search questions explain how to find the answers to straightforward and not-so-straightforward questions about a story.STORY PLANFill-in-the-blank sections aid in building story structure, including setting, main characters, problems, and solutions.Plus!CHECK IT! STRIPSReinforce concepts and build confidence as kids check their own work.Give your child's grades and confidence a boost with 4th Grade Reading Comprehension Success.Why Sylvan Learning Products Work Sylvan Learning Workbooks won a Honors Award from the National Parenting Publications Awards (NAPPA) as a top book series for children in the elementary-aged category. The NAPPA is the nation' s most comprehensive awards program for children's products and parenting resources, and has been critically reviewing products since 1990. The Award recognizes Sylvan Learning Workbooks as some of the most innovative and useful products geared to parents.Sylvan's proven system inspires kids to learn and has helped children nationwide catch up, keep up, and get ahead in school. Sylvan has been a trusted partner for parents for thirty years, and has based their supplemental education success on programs developed through a focus on the highest educational standards and detailed research. Sylvan's line of educational products equips families with fun, effective, and grade-appropriate learning tools. Our workbooks and learning kits feature activities, stories, and games to reinforce the skills children need to develop and achieve their academic potential. Students will reap the rewards of improved confidence and a newfound love of learning.

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750 Italian Verbs and Their Uses (750 Verbs Series) Review

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(More customer reviews)Finally, a book full of useful and 'real' life examples. This book provides clear usage of the many verbs listed using an assortment of tenses and conjugations. Don't expect this book to teach you how to conjugate verbs like the `501 verbs' book but, it will show you how to use those 501 verbs under a variety of contexts.
I wouldn't recommend this book to a novice since the book seems to assume that you have knowledge of most of the tenses. In fact, I'd probably find the book a little confusing/frustrating if I were at the "Italian 101" level. But for intermediate students, especially those whom are writing essays, I think the book is a good addition to their Italian library references.

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Essential grammar taught simply and directly . . .750 Italian Verbs and Their Uses gives you the backbone of language study-correct verb usage-by showing verb conjugations in their contexts.To understand the value of such an approach, consider the English verb "to hold," the meaning of which changes dramatically when used in such expressions as "hold on," "hold up," "hold off," and "hold down." In Italian, as students of the language have perennially learned to their frustration, the changes are confusing and apply to many verbs. Now you won't have to guess how a verb is used in a sentence: 750 Italian Verbs and Their Uses gives you all the correct variations and grammatical interrelationships.Correct usages are illustrated in common phrases and idiomatic expressions. Unusual or troublesome expressions are emphasized throughout. And special attention is given to reflexive verbs (often difficult for English speakers) to make their usage clear.Perfect for students and travelers, ideal as a text, a grammar book, and a reference, 750 Italian Verbs and Their Uses will help you not only to conjugate verbs, but also to use them correctly and comprehensively.

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Reading Greek Tragedy Review

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(More customer reviews)The two reviews here are silly and do not address the book directly. Goldhill is ambitious. He is trying to explain the nature of Greek tragedy and the circumstances of its development. He does this by discussing, in turn, particular works and particular themes. For instance, he discusses works that can only be understood in terms of the interworkings of the Greek polis and then describes the nature of the polis and its imhabitants. It is an impressive and illuminating product; those who are serious about understanding Greek tragedy should take the time to work though it.

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This book is an advanced critical introduction to Greek tragedy. It is written specifically for the reader who does not know Greek and who may be unfamiliar with the context of the Athenian drama festival but who nevertheless wants to appreciate the plays in all their complexity. Simon Goldhill aims to combine the best contemporary scholarly criticism in classics with a wide knowledge of modern literary studies in other fields. He discusses the masterpieces of Athenian drama in the light of contemporary critical controversies in such a way as to enable the student or scholar not only to understand and appreciate the texts of the most commonly read plays, but also to evaluate and utilize the range of approaches to the problems of ancient drama.

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Programming Perl (3rd Edition) Review

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(More customer reviews)If you're like me, and you're shopping for a book, you immediately start reading the negative reviews and work upwards. So I started reading the reviews and read through them all, bought the book despite the many negative, and frankly, snippish comments made by many reviewers and decided that I need to respond.
Many say that the examples are convoluted, or that he focuses on obscure language references. One says the book starts quickly with a discussion of the splice function. The first mention of splice is on page 355, which I certainly don't define as 'quickly'....
Others say that there are no examples, or they are not explained clearly, but there's a short sample program right on page 18, and then 4 pages are devoted to analyzing the program and how it works. Further review through the book shows many small examples, especially in the sections that outline the core functions of Perl, and the core modules of Perl.
Others come here and criticize Perl the language, and use this as a platform for their own advocacy of other languages. This is just silly. If you're interested in Perl, or you've been using Perl and you want to know more, buy this book. In the universe of computer programming, every language choice you make is controversial, and subject to debate, and just because some reviewers do not like Perl the language, it does not mitigate the quality of this book.
That all being said, and debunking the frankly lousy reviews, I'll caution that this is NOT for beginning programmers, or people with limited technical knowledge. O'Reilly knows this, and anyone who has read this book should know this too. There is a book called 'Beginning Perl', also from O'Reilly, and written by one of the other top minds in Perl. It is easy to follow, provides many concrete examples and is where a beginning programer should begin. If you have a technical background, you will probably be able to start with this book, though Learning Perl is still worth reading.
What this book provides is not only an exhaustive guide to the language of Perl, and it's abilities, but also insight into it's design, the decisions of the creator of the language (Larry Wall, the main author of the book created Perl), and the major philosophy behind Perl.
This is a valuable reference and worth having.
This is the book that I turn to when I have Perl questions.
And this book is worth every penny I spent to get it.

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Perl is a powerful programming language thathas grown in popularity since it first appeared in 1988. The first edition of this book, Programming Perl, hit the shelves in 1990, and was quickly adopted as theundisputed bible of the language. Since then, Perlhas grown with the times, and so has this book.

Programming Perl is not just a book about Perl. It isalso a unique introduction to the language and its culture,as one might expect only from its authors. Larry Wall is the inventor of Perl, and provides a unique perspective onthe evolution of Perl and its future direction. Tom Christiansen was one of the first champions of the language,and lives and breathes the complexities of Perl internalsas few other mortals do. Jon Orwant is the editor of The Perl Journal, which has brought together the Perlcommunity as a common forum for new developments in Perl.

Any Perl book can show the syntax of Perl's functions, but only this one is a comprehensive guide to all the nooks and crannies of the language. Any Perl book can explain typeglobs, pseudohashes, and closures, but only this one showshow they really work. Any Perl book can say that my is faster than local, but only this one explains why. Any Perl bookcan have a title, but only this book is affectionately known by all Perl programmers as "The Camel."

This third edition of Programming Perl has been expanded to cover version 5.6 of this maturing language. New topics include threading, the compiler, Unicode, and othernew features that have been added since the previous edition.

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Basic Russian Vocabulary: A Handy Reference of Everyday Words Arranged by Topic Review

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(More customer reviews)This book does something almost no dictionary does: it shows you the English definition, the Cyrillic word, and the English transliteration, so it helps with vocabulary, pronunciation, and word/character recognition.
The main section is grouped by topic, but there are complete Russian-English and English-Russian sections which also show all three forms.
Very simple concept - unique and invaluable.

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For beginners as well as more advanced Russi an speakers, Basic Russian Vocabulary groups words and phras es thematically to help learners build vocabulary for a vari ety of situations. '

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Evergreen: A Guide to Writing with Readings Review

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(More customer reviews)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).


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Evergreen combines carefully crafted instruction, high-interest readings and student models, and plentiful practice exercises, to provide the most effective paragraph-to-essay-level developmental writing text on the market. The ninth edition includes expanded and revised coverage of writing essays, including an additional essay chapter and numerous additional student models. Photos enhance high-interest readings and promote critical viewing as well as critical thinking and clear writing.

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Spanish With Michel Thomas (Deluxe Language Courses with Michel Thomas) Review

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(More customer reviews)The language learning system that Michel Thomas has put together is perhaps one of the easiest methods to learn a foreign language. Not quite as easy as one would be lead to believe from the cover, it is still one of the easiest methods I have ever had the pleasure of using. And pleasure is the operative word, just listening to the CDs is all that is required. No note taking, no study of vocabulary lists, nothing in the mode of traditional language learning. Instead of going straight through the complete system I listened to each CD twice before going on to the next one. The end result was that I could watch the Spanish channels and understand what is going on. After finishing six of the eight CDs I was at a local tourist attraction with a friend who had just completed a thirteen week course at a local college. A Latin woman approached us seeking help and he was totally useless while I was able to work through her conversation and provide her the answers that she needed. How long did it take? I just listened to it in my car instead of the stereo for two weeks. Will you be totally conversant after completing the course? No. But you will have a good strong background in basic conversational Spanish and be able to carry on basic conversations with others. The best way to learn conversational Spanish on the market today.

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Anyone can learn a language with Michel Thomas--The World's Greatest Language Teacher.

No books. No writing. No drills. And nothing to memorize--ever! With his unique program, Michel Thomas has taught celebrities, corporate leaders, and schoolchildren--with immediate and amazing results. Now the Language Teacher to the Stars invites everyone to join his class!

Using Spanish with Michel Thomas, listeners learn in real time--fully understanding as they go along, turning words into short sentences, and then building them into longer, more complex sentences, until they are conversing in Spanish.

Michel will have listeners formulating their own thoughts and sentences from the very beginning, even if they have never succeeded in learning a language before. Michel has used this very method to teach celebrities such as Mel Gibson, Woody Allen, Barbra Streisand, Warren Beatty, and Princess Grace of Monaco.

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Mac OS X Lion Bible Review

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(More customer reviews)MacOS Lion is significantly different from previous OS X versions. In many ways it's not as intuitive. I still miss "Save As" . An experienced writer and Macintosh expert - Galen takes the complexity out of OS. I found it a great reference for relatively simple issues - such as importing Fonts into Mac OS using Font Book - it's a great resource to have at hand - I just wish the publisher had a more sensible pricing policy for the digital editions !

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A comprehensive guide to all aspects of Mac's newest operating system, OS X Lion
The latest Mac operating system takes full advantage of the latest multi-touch trackpads, the new App Store for the desktop, and a host of upgrades that incorporate some of the best elements of the iPad experience. This book covers every new feature as well as all the basic Mac information for every level of expertise. Beginners will learn all about Mac OS X Lion and how to use it, while more advanced users can delve into tips, tricks, and higher-end professional information.
Looks at Mac OS X Lion, the latest version of the Mac operating system, and its features that bring Mac power together with iPad convenience
Offers comprehensive coverage of all the new features in depth, including multi-touch trackpad gestures, the App Store for Mac, Mission Control, and more
Includes basic coverage to give beginners a thorough understanding of the Mac OS, plus advanced information for those who want professional tips, tricks, guidance, and much more
Written by a recognized Apple expert and frequent contributor to Macworld

Mac OS X Lion Bible gives beginners a sound foundation in the new Mac operating system and provides experienced users with the information to take their skills to the next level.

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6,000+ Essential French Words with CD-ROM (Essential Vocabulary) Review

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(More customer reviews)Books of word lists are everywhere, but this book has the tool that allows you to actually assimilate the words: the CD-ROM that comes with it. It has a fantastic, user-friendly flash card program that helps you absorb the words. There are probably a couple hundred words already entered into the program, some with pictures, all with a french native pronouncing the words. You can enter your own words (or phrases containing hundreds of characters) and practice them. You can store words and phrases in categories to retrieve later. So, as you learn new words and phrases from anywhere, like TV, magazines, conversation, you can enter them and review them later.

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El gato en el sombrero/ The Cat In The Hat Review

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(More customer reviews)This is a literal translation of The Cat in the Hat, and it loses all of what makes Dr. Seuss special. The cadence, rhythm and rhyme are all missing in this very uninspired translation. If you want to read Dr. Seuss in Spanish, try Juevos Verdes con Hamon. That translation was done right!

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Translated by Carlos Rivera.

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Mass Communication Theory An Introduction Review

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(More customer reviews)As a professor of communication, I use this book as a text in my introductory course. While it lacks a little bit in giving details of individual theories, its broad coverage of the field is excellent. This is a good book for someone who wants to know what "mass communication" is all about, but you will need to read additional books or articles to get a full understanding of particular theories.

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The fully revised edition of this successful textbook has been comprehensively rewritten to take account of recent theory and research and to improve the accessibility of the text. The book provides a nontechnical introduction to the range of approaches to understanding mass communication. It offers an integrated treatment of the major components of mass communication - the sender, the message and the audience - and encompasses the various forms of mass communication in contemporary societies including television, radio, newspapers, film, music and new communication technologies. Throughout, Denis McQuail shows how theories of mass communication relate to the understanding of society as a whole.

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Plato's Symposium: Greek Text with Facing Vocabulary and Commentary Review

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(More customer reviews)I bought this because I was so impressed with the Herodotus Book 1 in the same series. This is perfect too!
It is wonderful to have all the notes and vocabulary opposite the text. Everything that you need to read Plato successfully is in one volume.
This is also a beautifully produced book. It is a pleasure to handle it. The typefaces are all clear and easy to read. I shall certainly buy any more texts that are produced in this series.

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Facing each of the 72 pages of John Burnet's Greek edition of Plato's Symposium (originally published by Oxford University Press in 1905) is a single page of corresponding vocabulary and intermediate level grammatical commentary. Once readers have memorized the core vocabulary list, they will be able to read the classical Greek and consult all relevant vocabulary and commentary without turning the page.

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¡Avance Intermediate Spanish Student Edition Review

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(More customer reviews)I used this textbook in my intermediate Spanish class in college (SPI 201 & 202). I found the choice of vocabulary throughout the chapters to be strange, but I like the grammar explanations.
Here are the chapters in this book:
Preface: Bienvenidos
1. Tipos y estereotipos
2. La comunidad humana
3. Costrumbes y tradiciones
4. La familia
5. Geografia, demografia, tecnologia
6. El hombre y la mujer en el mundo actual
7. El mundo de los negocios
8. Creencias e ideologias
9. Los hispanos en los Estados Unidos
10. La vida moderna
11. La ley y la libertad individual
12. El trabajo y el ocio
My favorite part of the book were the sections on the subjunctive. I used them as a reference when I was writing my book. If you want to look up the sections on the subjunctive in this book, bookmark the following pages: 120, 166, 197, 224, & 241.
Brandon Simpson

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¡Avance!: Intermediate Spanish is an exciting program for second-year students of Spanish. In response to requests from many users of the highly acclaimed Pasajes series, McGraw-Hill is pleased to publish the Second Edition of this single volume version, which distills the very best of Pasajes: Lengua, Cultura, and Literatura. The result is a comprehensive yet manageable program that enriches students' language foundation in thematic vocabulary and grammatical structures with a broad selection of literary and cultural readings. The overall goal of ¡Avance! is the development of functional, communicative language ability, accomplished through reinforcement, expansion, and synthesis. Contextualized activities that review language and foster skill development provide the core of ¡Avance! At the same time, the growing interest in cultural competence coupled with the desire to introduce students to literature at the intermediate level motivates the inclusion of cultural and literary texts in alternate chapters. As a result, ¡Avance! meets the professional demand that instructional materials be not merely contextualized but also content-rich and interesting to today's students.

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The Philosophy of Language Review

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(More customer reviews)Anyone serious about meaning in language should read these articles. They provide a baseline on which all other work builds. Whether you are interdisciplinary or only care about linguistics, philosophy, artificial intelligence or cognition, this book is one must-read paper after another.
I used it for both my graduate semantics and undergraduate philosophy of language classes at Carnegie Mellon. You can read these papers on your own -- they're actually very accessible for papers on philosophy and do not require any prior logical background (though an intro to logic would surely help). Taken together, this book is the perfect basis for a quarter, semester or whole year of philosophy of language.
The book's organized into sections on Truth and Meaning (Quine's classic paper on empiricism, Church on intensionality, Davidson and Strawson on truth and Tarski on semantics), Speech Acts (Austin on Performatives, Searle on Speech Acts, Grice on cooperation), Reference and Descriptions (Frege on sense and reference, Russell on denoting and descriptions with Strawson's reply on referring), Names and Demonstratives (Kripke on Naming and necessity and Putnam on meaning and reference), Propositional attitudes (Quine and Kaplan on quantifiers, Davidson and Kripke on propositional content, and Barwise and Perry on situation semantics), Metaphor (Davidson's classic paper, though I believe the second edition contained Searle's excllent paper on metaphor), Interpretation (Quine on meaning and Searle on indeterminancy), and the Nature of Language with what's left (Wittgenstein and Kripke on privacy, and Chomsky on semantic innateness).

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What is meaning? How is linguistic communication possible? What is the nature of language? What is the relationship between language and the world? How do metaphors work? The Philosophy of Language, considered the essential text in its field, is an excellent introduction to such fundamental questions. This revised edition collects forty-one of the most important articles in the field, making it the most up-to-date and comprehensive volume on the subject. The fourth edition features several new articles including influential work by Bertrand Russell, John R. Searle, John Perry, Ruth Garrett Millikan, and John Stuart Mill. Other selections include classic articles by such distinguished philosophers as Gottlob Frege, P. F. Strawson, J. L. Austin, Hilary Putnam, and David Kaplan.The selections represent evolving and varying approaches to the philosophy of language, with many articles building upon earlier ones or critically discussing them. Eight sections cover the central issues: Truth and Meaning; Speech Acts; Reference and Descriptions; Names and Demonstratives; Propositional Attitudes; Metaphor; Interpretation and Translation; and The Nature of Language. The revised general introduction and introductions to each section give students background to the issues and explain the connections between them. A list of suggested further reading follows each section.

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CliffsTestPrep Praxis II: English Subject Area Assessments (0041, 0042, 0043, 0048, 0049) Review

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(More customer reviews)I found the content review in this book quite helpful, especially the terminology review. It was a focused listing, which was much more useful than just sitting down and reading a dictionary of literary terms. One big problem I had with the book, though, was with the practice test. Granted, I was ecstatic to have a full-length practice test so that I could practice my pacing as well, but some of the answers in the answer key were just plain WRONG. One of them actually said that a line of pure iambic pentameter has 14 syllables! Also, at least one of the answers in the answer key had the letter for one answer, and the description supporting another. I only took the practice test for 0041, so I don't know how the others were.
The book was useful for me, especially since the only "textbooks" I have to study from are anthologies that don't go over the basic vocabulary; just BEWARE that SOME OF THE PRACTICE TEST ANSWERS ARE WRONG, so make sure you read all the answers and explanations, but don't use the practice test as your only study tool. The study guide parts of the book, though, are quite beneficial for a brush up on your basics (and some not-so-basics), especially of vocabulary.

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Your guide to a higher score on Praxis II?: English Subject Area Assessments (0041, 0042, 0043, 0048, 0049)Why CliffsTestPrep Guides?Go with the name you know and trustGet the information you need--fast!Written by test-prep specialistsAbout the contents:Introduction* Specific content covered on each test: English Language, Literature, and Composition: Content Knowledge (0041), Essays (0042), and Pedagogy (0043); Teaching Foundations: English (0048); and Middle School English Language Arts (0049)Part I: Preparing for the Format of the Praxis II* Strategies for answering all 3 types of questions: multiple choice, constructed response, and essay; plus practice questions to give you experiencePart II: Preparing for the Content of the Praxis II* Outlines of the 4 categories of content: Reading and Understanding Text, Language and Linguistics, Composition and Rhetoric, and Teaching EnglishPart III: Full-length Practice Tests* 5 full-length practice tests (one per subject area) with answers and explanationsPart IV: Closing Thoughts (Study Plan; Additional Resources)Test-Prep Essentials from the Experts at CliffsNotes?More than Notes!CliffsAP?? /CliffsComplete?? /CliffsQuickReview?? /CliffsTestPrep? /CliffsStudySolver?TM

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Evaluating Change in English Language Teaching Review

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(More customer reviews)I am currently teaching English in Japan and for my research am looking at recent curriculum revisions in the English language teaching in elementary schools in Japan. Judith was my graduate supervisor at Birmingham and recommended her upcoming book on how to set out the ideas for my dissertation. I have read the book now over the past two months and it gives a very detailed and concise description about how Education ministries and local education authorities, schools and teachers implement change and innovation in language teaching, undertake curriculum reform and introduce new ideas into the classroom. Sometimes curriculum change is positive or negative depending on how change is brought about and introduced by the education authorities in a particular country or education system, and how it is received by agents of change i.e teachers who may accept or reject change and innovation of change, The first chapter provides an intoduction of what educational change is, further chapters describe curriculum change, the different models of change that exist from top-down prescriptive models where change is forced on those below, to others where teachers identify a problem and through social-networking set about solving the problem and co-operating with educational authorities on realising their needs.
The book gives many case-study examples with reference citations of where both positive and negative change has been implemented in ESL classrooms around the world, and the final chapters deal with change involving MA TESL students, Chinese university lecturers of English and Japanese teachers of English. The book contains a fairly tthorough appendices, and 12 pages of references in the bibliography.
This book will be of interest to teacher-trainers teaching graduate students on TESL and EFL programs about introducing innovation and change in language classrooms. TESL and linguistics students researching curriculum innovation and change, and teachers who may be thinking of implementing reforms in their own classrooms will also find this book useful. Readers can go to chapters that are of interest to them and it makes a good reference material for graduate courses. Judith was recently the head of the English for International Studies unit at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom.

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This book isan exploration of the processes of change in English language teaching. Part I introduces the principles and strategies of change and factors affecting educational change. Part II focuses on implementing change and looks at key implementation strategies and systemic and behavioural change, before introducing a new interpersonal model of change. Part III presents various ways in which change can be measured and evaluated with reference to contemporary research in English language teaching.

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The Book of Revelation: A Commentary on the Greek Text (New International Greek Testament Com (Eerdmans)) Review

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(More customer reviews)Dr. Bill Mounce (son of Dr. Robert Mounce, who wrote another Revelation commentary, also colleague of Dr. Beale at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary) once joked and said that "you know it's good when it's so thick."
I took a New Testament Interpretation class with Dr. Beale, and also have his Revelation class notes.
Indeed, this is a brilliantly written book, which is well-written and thoroughly done from an amillennial perspective. Although this camp is not particularly big within evangelicalism (the predominant view being premillennialism), this particular camp has some advantages of being supported by strong scholarship. Beale's book is one of the best in terms of applying interpretational methods.
Beale starts off with about 69 pages of background on symbolism of numbers and the symbolic nature of Revelation. His main premise is that the beginning of the book of Revelation (Rev. 1:1) begins with "he revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his servants what must soon take place; and he made it known by sending his angel to his servant John..." The word "made it known" (RSV) in greek is esemanen (aorist active indicative, 3rd singular for semaino ... which should be rendered "to be communicated in symbols"). Thus, Beale takes the view that the book of Revelation should be read primarily symbolically unless there is ample evidence that it should not be rendered symbolically. He would note some of those symbols include numbers, lampstands, sword, etc. Thus, because of the symbolic nature of the book, the "1000 years" of Rev. 20:4-6 is to be understood symbolically rather than a literal 1000 years, rendering his view as "amillennial".
Beale does a great job in scholarship in interacting with other views, namely the premillennial and postmillennial views (especially readings of Revelation 20:4-6 ... close to 100 pages here), and also with other theories of the horsemen (e.g., Beasly-Murray, etc.) He even interacts with other commentaries and papers written on Revelation, as well as incorporating other literature (e.g., Jewish apocryphal writings) to analyze the text. Excellent scholarship!
To utilize this commentary well, you will need some basic Greek training (as Beale does utilize the Greek New Testament a lot, including doing textual criticism analysis, sentence flow analysis), like at least a first-year biblical Greek course.
This is indeed the best amillennial commentary (and probably the best commentary) that I've seen of Revelation. The two that are typically suggested by scholars include Dr. Robert Mounce's and this one!

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Accessible and comprehensive, the latest volume of the respected New International Greek Testament Commentary provides an in-depth look at the parallels between images in the Apocalypse and their Old Testament and Jewish antecedents. Beales painstaking anaylsis will help you better understand the obscure metaphors in Revelation and the purpose of the book itself.

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