Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 550
EAN num: 9781581970210
ISBN number: 1581970218
Label: Xam Online.com
Manufacturer: Xam Online.com
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 150
Printing Date: 2001-01
Publishing house: Xam Online.com
Sale Popularity Level: 1788770
Studio: Xam Online.com
Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
This study guide targets teacher competencies and skills for Earth Science.You read four years of material between the covers of one study guide. Regardless if your is multiple choice or essay format you will have ample material to reflect upon to do well on these formats.
The majority of XAM study guides have 125 question multiple choice sample tests. the questions are medium to hard in difficulty but reasonable for a trained teacher candidate to answer. Since the questions do highly resemble the real test we are frequently asked if they are formker tests. They are not. If any question from our book appears on the test it would be a coincidence.
XAM Publishing, Ltd. has e-mail support at winwin1111@aol.com. XAM staff welcomes your updates and values your input. Each year a new version of the study guide is released so you may have the best in educational research.
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers -
Having recently decided to pursue licensure to teach earth science, I picked up XAM's Praxis II guide for high school earth science. Based on other Praxis guides I had purchased, I assumed the cover price of almost $35 reflected a hefty, comprehensive guide to the exam. When I received the book, I was sorely disappointed. The book only 76 pages long, four of which are nothing but unrelated cartoons. The book is printed in rather large text and the figures are poorly reproduced. In fact, some figures were so poorly printed that they're practically undecipherable. All together, your average high school and college handouts are of better quality than this book. A quick look at the haphazard design of their website can give you some clue as to the haphazard design and poor production values of their book.
Despite my initial disappointment, I did not immediately return the book to Amazon. While I have a background in geology and hydrology, the book also covers astronomy and meteorology. I figured I would at least give it a read to bring me back up to date on basics I had either forgotten, or used so subconsciously that I'd benefit from having them brought to the forefront of my mind as a refresher.
The content of the book itself is fairly solid. It provides good coverage of the basics of geology, hydrology, meteorology, and astronomy. In this respect, the book has value as a refresher course for prospective earth science teachers and as a guide for lesson planning. It hits most of the highlights of earth science. The downside is that the text is so full of typos and grammatical and spelling errors that you'll likely feel compelled to double-check the information presented to make sure what you're reading is correct. The writing gets repetitive in areas, reiterating the same information presented just one or two pages before as if it were new information. The grammatical errors, such as, "An atom is the building blocks of matter" and inconsistencies, such as using "earthquake" and "earth-quake" on the same page might lead you to question the education level of the author.
All in all, the book is a mix of pros and cons. The pros are that the book does provide a comprehensive review of basic earth science. The cons are poor production values, illegible figures, and plenty of grammatical errors, spelling errors, and typos. If you can get a used copy of this book or borrow it from someone it's worth a read. It is not, however, worth the cover price of $34.95. Since it was the only text dedicated to the Praxis exam's earth science component, I can only surmise that the cover price is not based on the value of the book itself, but because of the specialized content. In other words, they stick you for that much because they can.
In short, I would not recommend buying a new copy of this book. My new copy looks about the same as a used book, so you're better off searching for the cheapest copy you can find. This book would be more appropriately priced at about $15. If you can't find a cheap copy, I would suggest looking at books in your local library for earth science reviews before even considering purchasing this book.
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