The "Introduction," which is one page long, states, "The purpose of this book is to give experience in various formats or organizational patterns so that whatever the point [purpose] of a piece of writing, it will come across in a logical fashion and make the point as strongly as possible."  It does not cover poetry, narrative writing, journaling, or creative writing.  Only expository writing is covered in Format Writing.

The next section is entitled, "To the Teacher."  It is four pages long.  Some options concerning how to utilize this book are presented.  This is a good section with practical advice for the parent/teacher as to different ways to implement the writing assignments.

Section 1, consisting of 11 pages, is entirely on paragraph construction.   Four of those pages introduce and teach about good paragraph construction and its importance.  The paragraph types are:  example, classification, definition, process, analogy, cause & effect, and comparison.  One page is devoted to explaining how to write each of the paragraphs--one page per type of paragraph.  Writing these paragraphs prepares the student to compose complete essays in the next section.

Section 2 is all about essay elements.  This section covers thesis statements and other foundational info such as introductory paragraphs, concluding paragraphs, transitions, body, general guidelines.  The essay types are:  example, classification, definition, process, analogy, cause & effect, and comparison.

Section 3 contains the essay formats.  Two pages present information and provide instructions for each of the essay types.

Section 4 covers precis writing, which is possibly better known as condensation.  Approximately 10 pages provide instruction in condensation and some practice exercises.

Section 5 is writing the term paper or position paper.  I don't feel that this is the strongest section of the book.  Jensen does admit that this 17-page section is designed to simply introduce you to the basic elements of a major paper and give some simple guidelines for their writing.  We will probably use another resource for term paper writing since we need more help than this book provides.  He does give excellent advice, though, concerning term papers.  He suggests that a series of shorter term papers (that utilize all the steps) be assigned rather than one large paper.  The process is learned through repetition.  One big term paper doesn't confer the same results.  He elaborates more than I have, but you get the gist of it.

Section 6 contains the answers for precis section, evaluation sheets, two tests.  This is a short section.

You might ask, "How can you evaluate this curriculum when you haven't even used it?"  This is a reasonable question, and I feel that my answer is also reasonable:  I've been a high school and college student.  I've had to write essays in both high school and college.  I had to write two term papers in high school, and we also learned precis writing while in Mythology class.  I've finished my high school education and know what was missing in my education.

Far and away the most helpful class that I took in high school was Science Fiction.  I had to have a "writing" class and, thanks to arena registration (boo-hiss), this was my only option.  What a joke--little miss romance reader being required to read Sci-Fi and stuck in a class full of people that actually enjoyed Sci-Fi.  If that wasn't bad enough ... here's the kicker--every test was an essay test.  There were no, nada, zippo, none, not even one multiple-choice test.

Now, I managed good grades in high school, but teachers didn't give essay tests; they were strictly multiple choice, fill-in the blank-type teachers.  I thought I had landed in the absolute worst class imaginable when I seated my self for the first time in Sci-Fi class.  We had to read Brave New World, Dune, *and* take essay tests?  Once I recovered from the shock--which took days, maybe weeks, I started learning how to answer the essay test questions.  Of course, our instructor realized what trouble she was in after the first test.  LOL!  She went into remedial-essay-test-taking mode and baby stepped our class through *how to take an essay question test and live to tell the tale with at least a B-.*  She taught us how to write a paragraph--a simple thesis, three supporting comments, and conclusion.  I can't say she made a writer out of me, but she at least gave me something to work with!!

So you're still asking, "How can you evaluate a program when you haven't used it?"  Well, Format Writing teaches a student how to write a good paragraph.  In fact it teaches a student how to write seven different types of paragraphs.  This is the kind of information that I needed in high school, quite possibly junior high.  This is what I was finally taught in Sci-Fi class, but Jensen goes above and beyond what we were taught--which is good, yet it's not more than a high school student should be able to handle.

As for the complete five-paragraph essays, we learned how to write those, too, in Sci-Fi class (seems incongruous, no?).  So when I got to college and was in Freshman Composition, I already knew *how* to write my first assigned essay.  It was a classification essay--which I'd never heard of, nor had I even written one before.  I did exactly as I was told, though I had little true instruction beyond being told to write a classification essay.  I turned it in and received a basically unmarked paper except for big red letters on the second page spelling out, "So What?!?  D."  I was crushed.  I had done exactly as I thought he wanted.  That was most likely the first grade I received at college, and I was not at all used to receiving Ds!  For the next essay--I can't remember which type of essay it was--I fared better.  I got a big red C.  Yikes!  What was I to do?  I'm not sure what finally turned the tide, but by the 3rd or 4th paper I did start getting As or Bs on my papers.

So how does this apply to Format Writing?  Well, I had never heard of a *classification essay* prior to college.  I had never heard of a *definition essay* or a *process essay* either.  If I had been exposed to them in high school, actually been taught how to write them, practiced writing 2 or 3 of each type of essay, I believe I could have gone on to college a little better prepared.  (Background: I was in regular Freshman Composition 100ab, not anything remedial.  I was even excused from the placement test given to all incoming freshmen because I had scored so highly on the Test of Standard Written English when taking the SAT.)  Why didn't my high school prepare me for college-level writing?  Your guess is as good as mine.  But Format Writing covers the writing assignments that we had in Freshman Composition class at college.  I would have been better prepared for college (and just a better writer in general) if I had been given writing assignments like those found in Format Writing.  Format Writing will be a great course for my two homeschoolers when they get to a little closer to high school level, and I'm relieved to have found something to make my job just that much easier.

Detractors of the five-paragraph essay--and there are some--might claim that Format Writing is stifling or too rigid or lacking in creativity.  I could also go along with this a bit.  Stating a thesis and providing supporting evidence can be done in other ways; all essays needn't necessarily take the form of the five-paragraph essay.  Once a student has mastered the formats in Format Writing, he/she can start developing alternative methods of organization if necessary.  I feel that the five-paragraph essay is the foundation of good expository writing.  It can be dull reading at times, possibly mechanical.  Regardless, the five-paragraph essay is a good way to learn to write logical, lucid essays.  Being able to write five-paragraph essays is foundational and basic.  A student that knows the basics, can add flourishes of creativity and occasionally modify the format to suit the topic and their audience.

To sum it all up, Format Writing is a good, solid writing program.  It's not flashy; it's not expensive.  It doesn't do a lot of hand holding either.  What it does do, though, is give the student a system for writing well-supported, well-organized paragraphs and essays.

A:  Format Writing makes mention of a pro-life paper (as an option), Old Testament kings, Scripture, Isaiah 28:10, the topics of an example paragraph and and example essay are both "faith."  I would venture a guess that the author is religious, but Format Writing seems devoid of any other references to religion.

Q: Is this all my student will need for high school writing?

A:  No.  But I do feel that this course does cover all the bases when it comes to expository paragraph and essay writing.