Purposeful Writing in

the Disciplines and for

Professions
Purpose and Audience
 Purpose and audience
O Purpose- is the author’s main reason of
writing.
----What is this for?
o Audience-is the particular group of readers
or viewers that the writer is addressing.
---who is this for?
 3 broad purposes for writing
O To inform
O To persuade
O To entertain
 Writing a Book Review
O Both an evaluation and description of
a book.
O Formal paper that descries, analyzes,
and evaluates a particular piece of
work and provides detailed evidence
to support your analysis and
evaluation.
O Further a review often explains how
the book compares to other works on
similar topics.
Consider…
O What is the book about?
O Is it worth reading?
O Why?
O Why not?
---Writing a book review means you
describe what is on the page, analyze how
the book achieved its purpose and express
your reactions.
 Difference of Book Review and
Book Report?
O Book reports tend to focus on
summarizing the work that you read; your
goal is to explain what it says and show that
you read the book with care.
O In contrast, book review asks you to
analyze a boo; your goal is to identify the
key arguments of the book and how the
author supports these arguments as well as
to evaluate the book’s strengths and
weaknesses.
---Book reviews focus on the book’s purpose,
contents and relevance. They might differ in
style but book reviews share the following
common features.
1. Book review is a summary of the content of
he book that includes relevant description
of as well as its overall perspective, and
purpose.
2. Boo review offers critical assessment of the
content which includes your reactions to
the work under review.
3. Book review suggests
whether or not the reader would
appreciate it and if the books is
worth reading.
 Guidelines in Writing Book Review
A. Pre –Writing phase
1. What is the main argument or thesis of
the book?
2. What important idea/s would the
author want you to get?
3. Is the author successful in conveying
his/her ideas/arguments to the
audience?
4. What is the author’s style of
writing?
5. How are characters developed?
6. What is the structure of the
plot?
7. Would you recommend this
book to reader?
 B. Writing Phase.
After taking note of your
observation, you may organize
your thoughts and start writing.
The review may start with the
introduction, body of the
review and conclusion.
 Introduction
O Name of the author, the book title and the
main theme.
O Relevant details about who the author is
and where he/she stands in the genre or
field of inquiry-you could also link the title
to the subject to show how the title
explains the subject matter.
O The context of the book and/or your
review —Place your review in a framework
that makes sense to your audience.
O The thesis of the book — if you
are reviewing fiction, this may
be difficult since novels, plays,
and short stories rarely have
explicit arguments. But
identifying its particular novelty,
angle, or originality allows you
to show what specific
contribution the piece is trying
to make.
 Development
O Develop your thesis using
supporting arguments. Use
descriptive, evaluative, and if
possible explanation of why the
author wrote as he/she did
 Conclusion
O If your thesis has been well
argued, the conclusion should
follow naturally. It can include
a final assessment or simply
restate your thesis. Do not
introduce new material at this
point.