Product Description

The original, best-selling interdisciplinary composition text, Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum, Ninth Edition, teaches students of all majors and interests to communicate effectively. This text provides students with the opportunity to practice the essential college-level writing skills of summary, critique, synthesis, and analysis. An exciting new chapter on advertising supports the current need for skills in analyzing visual arguments.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #509472 in Books
• Published on: 2004-12-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 880 pages

From the Back Cover

WRITING AND READING ACROSS THE CURRICULUM
BRIEF EDITION
Third Edition
Laurence Behrens and Leonard J. Rosen

This brief version of the best-selling cross-curricular classic retains its hallmark coverage of source-based writing skills, accompanied by five popular readings chapters. An essential text for student writers in any academic discipline, Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum, Brief Edition, teaches students of all majors and interests to communicate more effectively.

In this third edition, you will find compelling new units, including:

• A new chapter on marriage and family in America that explores the changing roles (and expectations) of women as “wives,” gay marriage, and “the radical idea” of marrying for love.
• A new chapter on sleep that focuses on the science of sleep and why adolescents and college students are chronically shortchanged.
• A new appendix from Longman, Avoiding Plagiarism, that helps you understand how to use source material appropriately in your college writing.

Find the resources you need at www.mypearsonstore.com

Customer Reviews

The best apparatus out there
This cut down by more than half the time it has taken my students to learn to write summaries, integrate sources, understand argument, and write syntheses.

Many of the readings are also interesting and productive, especially those on Folklore and Obedience to Authority. I'd teach it in combination with a course reader, though, since there's almost no attention to the process of helping students find their voice and write more beautiful prose.

But no one book can do everything, and I plan to keep teaching this one. My students like it too -- with its focus on arguable ideas and the wonderful step-by-step breakdown of the writing process.

Convoluted Nightmare -just terrible
I'm currently using this for a freshman English course, and I find it is a complete mess. There are historical mistakes (claiming Cicero was the greatest writer of the Roman Empire -when Cicero wrote during the Republic), spelling errors, and even grammatical errors (take the title of Chapter 4 for instance: "Types of Synthesis: Explanatory and Argument" -has the author ever run into the term parallelism?).

The book is full of redundancies and proprietary terminology. Some of the concepts are barely explained, others are beaten to death. The writing style is not consistent, leading to the suspicion that many people had their hands in this one -perhaps "authors" in India. Some of the exercises are barely comprehensible. For instance:

"Look over the preceding readings and make a list of the ways they address the overall topics of computers, communication, and relationships. Make your list as detailed as you can. Then write several lists grouping together the readings that deal with similar aspects of the overall topics" (108).

We really don't want our students writing like this, so the last thing we should do is expose them to a textbook like this.

Some of the reading selections are good, and others are vapid, pointless, and generally worthless. Essays about dirty dorm rooms and lack of parking spaces behind the gym -oh yes, this is really provocative.

I challenge anyone to find me a worse textbook.

This Book Is An Insomniac's Best Friend
This is easily the most boring book ever published. It literally put me to sleep last night. I have chronic insomnia. Doctors should prescribe this as a sleep aide. It is atrocious. You're selling these stupid tomes for over $60, put a few images in there. Go wild and print a page in color. You can afford it you money-grubbing swine.