Home Schooling Website Gives Five-star Endorsement To 'Gettysburg Approach To Writing & Speaking'

May 15, 2010 - PRLog -- Home School Book Reviews, a website devoted to promoting and supporting home schooling, has given a five-star endorsement to The Gettysburg Approach to Writing & Speaking like a Professional.

"Home schooling" (also known as "home education") is a worldwide movement of parents who believe they can better educate their children at home than in traditional schools.

The U.S. Department of Education reports that in 2007 the number of home-schooled children in the United States stood at about 1.5 million, up from 850,000 in 1999. Moreover, the percentage of young Americans being home-schooled in 2007 had reached 2.9 percent, up from 1.7 percent in 1999, confirming the increasing acceptance and popularity of the home-schooling movement.

In his commentary, reviewer Wayne S. Walker, a home-schooling father, asks:
"Do you think that you could write (or speak) something as memorable as Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address?"  
"Maybe not," he answers, "but you can still learn the fundamental principles for effective writing and speaking that are based upon the 16th President’s famous speech. Drawing from the Gettysburg Address, author Philip Yaffe, a former writer with The Wall Street Journal and a marketing communication consultant, provides tips and techniques that are designed to help your own writing and speaking to advance by leaps and bounds."
For ease of use, the book is divided into three interrelated sections.

“The Fundamentals of Good Writing” explains the difference in basic purpose and attitude between creative writing (fiction) and expository (non-fiction) writing, and identifies the key characteristics of good writing: clarity, conciseness, and density. “Oral Presentations; Giving Voice to Your Words" shows how these self-same principles can be applied to public speaking.
These two "theoretical" sections are relatively short, taking up only about a third of its 275 pages. The final section consists of 13 appendices containing examples, instructive exercises, and additional information, e.g. "How to Get the Most from Your Word Processor," to improve written and oral communication.
"Understanding that this book focuses on expository writing, whose main purpose is to instruct, inform, and persuade, rather than creative writing, home-schooling parents might find that this book could be a good resource upon which to build a year’s writing curriculum for their teen, especially if he or she is thinking about a business career," Mr. Walker says.

"The Gettysburg Approach will prove beneficial to anyone who wishes to write better. Five stars," he concludes.
The Gettysburg Approach, as are all books Mr. Walker reviews, has been donated to Shawnee Library System of the Southern Illinois Library Network.

Biographical Information

Philip Yaffe was born in Boston in 1942 and grew up in Los Angeles. In 1965 he graduated in mathematics from UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles), where he was also editor-in-chief of the Daily Bruin, the daily student newspaper.

Mr. Yaffe has more than 40 years of experience in journalism and marketing communication. At various points in his career, he has been a teacher of journalism, a reporter/feature writer with The Wall Street Journal, an account executive with a major international press relations agency, European marketing communication director with two major international companies, and a founding partner of a marketing communication agency in Brussels, Belgium, where he has lived since 1974.

He can be reached either at phil.yaffe@yahoo.com or phil.yaffe@gmail.com.

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Philip Yaffe is a former reporter/feature writer with The Wall Street Journal and an international marketing communication consultant living in Brussels, Belgium. His latest book is The Gettysburg Approach to Writing & Speaking like a Professional.