Jeanne Godfrey

I thought that this book might be helpful to my son, He'd had a bit of trouble integrating quotes into his essays and this book seemed to offer some sensible suggestions. It's really pitched at the undergraduate level ...and mainly with the humanity subjects....though most of the examples are from Business studies and Psychology. Actually, I think Jeanne Godfrey does a really good and thorough job. She has some really good suggestions about understanding what you are reading and using your show more reading in your essay (which is probably the most important part of the book). Some nice distinctions are drawn between paraphrasing, summarising and quoting. I especially liked her Fig 7 on p 83 which outlines the sort of time one should be spending for using four journal articles or book chapters in your essay. (Maybe it's a bit longer than I would want to devote...but at least it gives a rough guide. Likewise, I liked her list of alternative verbs that one coud use for reporting, re-expressing and discussing source material. this is potentially really useful to the struggling essayist. She has also included other similar lists of words for making positive comments or negative comments about an article.
There are some really useful grammar and style tips....like don't use technical words unless necessary. (Though this seems to go against the marking criteria that was being used in HSC English...which was rewarding students for using big words ...even at the cost of intelligibility). And some useful information about going over the finished work...printing it out and reading it aloud to pick up errors or poor phrasing.
And she does include the obvious stuff...like inserting quotes correctly and citing the reference correctly ...and even making an annotated reference list as one is doing the basic research.
Quite a useful book for a student. 4.5 stars. show less