«Updated with many new references, this entertaining book advises students on ways to enliven their essay assignments with vivid images, avoid the dull passive voice, and construct smooth, well-crafted sentences that flow together to create unified themes. Short quizzes called “Brain Ticklers” appear throughout the text. Titles in Barron’s «Painless Series» are written especially for middle school and high school students who are having a difficult time with a specific subject. In many cases, a student is confused by the subject’s complexity and details. Still other students simply finds a subject uninteresting, an attitude that usually results in lower grades. Painless titles offer informal, student-friendly approaches to each subject, emphasizing interesting details, supplementing the text with amusing insights, and outlining potential pitfalls clearly and step by step. Students begin to understand how disparate details all fit together to form a clear picture. Timelines, ideas for interesting projects, and “Brain Tickler” quizzes in many of these titles help to take the pain out of study and improve each student’s grades.»

Here's a very approachable textbook for both children and adults who speak English as their second language. It acquaints students with correct English sentence construction, parts of speech, capitalization, punctuation, and spelling, and offers extra tips on how to expand one's English-language vocabulary. After laying out these fundamentals, the authors proceed with solid instruction on writing a paragraph in English, and then with instruction on writing a multi-paragraph story. Advice includes choosing a topic to write about, sketching out a rough draft, and finally revising and editing the finished piece. Students once daunted by what they perceived as the intricacies of English will be attracted by the authors' student-friendly approach to proficiency.