America Writes: Learning English Through American Short Stories

I purchased this book last year for an essay course I taught at a Korean university. It's an incredible book and I wish the authors would make this a series. The stories deal with many topics and they're never dull. The book also provides excellent material for teaching grammar, which is essential for good writing.The authors divide the stories into chapters that deal with certain themes. For example, the first chapter is named "A Life Lesson." All of the stories in that chapter have protagonists that learn something significant in the story.Each story is presented with the same format: Think Before You Read Literary Term Idioms and Expressions Comprehension Vocabulary Grammar Sharing Ideas Writing The grammar lessons are excellent, I found it very easy to cover the topics. Unlike other ESL materials, I rarely had to supplement the book with outside material. There is a wealth of material in each chapter and it makes a reading and writing course informative yet fun for the students. I was impressed with their selection of writers. They chose stories from heavyweights like Ernest Hemingway and Langston Hughes, but they also have excellent stories from lesser known writers. They also show the diversity of the American experience by including stories by ethnic writers. I would highly recommend this book as a text for a reading and writing course for ESL students at the university level or advanced high school students.

I am an ESL/HS English teacher and have used America Writes for two years now. The choices of stories is excellent, introducing English language students to classic authors such as, Hemingway, Langston Hughes,Hawthorne, and O. Henry (to name just a few). The prereading questions and vocabulary along with idioms and expressions help tremendously to prepare the reader for the selection. It's great being able to have my students read at the higher level of content that they are ready for emotionally and intellectually and still have their language needs addressed. I would love to see this be made into a series with more than the one edition!! I highly recommend it for teachers as well as students working on their own to broaden their reading in English!!!