Smalley, Ruetten, and Kozyrev's Refining Composition Skills is exactly what its title portends: a writing text for high intermediate and advanced ESL students. It comes with readings--both professional and student, with writing units, and with a grammar appendix. Each section is accompanied by appropriate exercises, discussion questions, journal writings, and other writing activities.

The text is organized along rhetorical modes of writing. Students begin at the paragraph level, refining narrative, descriptive, and expository paragraphs. Great pains are taken to clarify students' notions of the academic paragraph with its usual topic sentence/controlling idea and its specific development. Next, the text moves into essay forms: the "Example Essay," the "Comparison and Contrast Essay," the "Classification Essay," the "Process Analysis Essay," the "Cause-and-Effect Analysis Essay," and finally the "Argumentative Essay." Each chapter comes with rhetorical models of the writing under discussion; the discussion questions accompanying the readings serve as brainstorming and critical aids for proposed student work. Concluding the text proper is the grammar practice section providing exercises in advanced grammar topics, such as adverbials, conditionals, and articles. Finally, the text includes appendices that provide peer review checklists, citation examples, and charts of specific grammar rules.

There are many obvious pluses for this text. For example, the writing samples include professional and student works. The inclusion of both provides the text with a broad academic perspective, both model and opportunity for student critique. The writing assignments include assignments based on Internet research and activities as well as more traditional research. An important discussion on plagiarism also accompanies the research activities.

I appreciated the text's explicit and intensive attention to paragraph development. In the chapter discussing narrative paragraphs, for example, the text builds an example utilizing its companion video (which I have not seen) and demonstrates the difference between a "pretty good" paragraph and a "very good" paragraph; the difference, says the text, is the presence of the author's attitude in the very good paragraph. In the same section, the text offers students controlled opportunities to manipulate information and supporting sentences, then develops that practice into an interview assignment (some possible interview questions are presented) and the subsequent narrative paragraph. The text continues this intensive composition practice in its remaining sections.

I was also interested in the book’s technique of suggesting particular grammatical exercises to the student that s/he might utilize when preparing individual rhetorical modes. For example, the chapter assigning descriptive paragraphs suggests that students might investigate adjective clauses to assist them in writing their paragraphs. In that section on adjective clauses are eight sentence combining examples and ten practice sentences. While I doubt that ten practice sentences constitutes nearly enough for students in serious need, I do think that such grammar discussions could serve as a prelude for individual and peer revision of student work.

Given the niche that this text attempts to serve--advanced, mature, and motivated ESL students--Refining Composition Skills is a work that would serve these students well. Less mature and motivated students might find the text too intense, not alleviated by colorful graphics or humor. Nor do the readings provide relief. There has been an obvious attempt to include readings that would engage the serious ESL college student. For example, such topics as academic excellence, contemporary communications, and marketing have been discussed, but the articles are consistently serious, though thought-provoking. Furthermore, as I was perusing the articles, I noted only one authored by an Hispanic, though several have been authored by Asians. Consequently, while this text purports to be a "rhetoric and grammar," i.e. an all-purpose/all-inclusive text, I wouldn't want it to be my only text.