Product Description

This best-selling writing guide integrates purpose, process, and rhetorical strategies into every chapter, offering readers the clearest explanation of writing. In addition to emphasizing critical reading, every major chapter contains professional and student samples, rhetorical techniques, journal exercises, reading and writing activities, collaborative activities, peer-response guidelines, and revision suggestions. A student essay in each chapter contains writing process materials (outlines, audience analysis, interview notes, drafts, revision plans, etc.). For high school and college students.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #591642 in Books
• Published on: 2005-02-12
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 816 pages

From the Publisher
A complete rhetoric, reader, and handbook that is organized around the major purposes of writing--moving from personal writing to academic writing and the research paper. Each purpose is presented in a self-contained chapter that provides professional and student readings and takes student through the entire writing process.

From the Back Cover

The Fifth Edition: * Continues to highlight Internet-related features with eight essays on Internet-related topics, such as censorship, web page surfing, jobs created by the Internet, and the electronic global village. Revised features include Internet source evaluation and the new MLA documentation format.
* Contains thirteen new essays featuring writers such as Susan Douglas on "The X-Files," Pico Iyer on the global village, Cathleen Cleaver on the Internet, Wanda Coleman on Joe Camel, and Michael Marin on famine in Africa.
* Continues to showcase student writing, featuring the work of more than forty student writers from a wide range of colleges and universities.
* Offers an in-depth interactive website with self-graded exercises, web links, online research help, and additional material for instructors. See prenhall/reid .

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

"A writer is a reader moved to emulation."
— Saul Bellow

AS WE DESIGN OUR WRITING COURSES, REASON TELLS US TO FOCUS ON TEACHING THE RHETORICAL SITUATION, CRITICAL READING AND THINKING, COMPUTER LITERACY, AND RESEARCH AND DOCUMENTATION. INTUITION, HOWEVER, TELLS US that writers learn to write simply by reading and rereading the writers they love.

Three new authors in The Prentice Hall Guide for College Writers can teach our students nearly everything they need to know about the craft of writing. First, Adam Forest, a student writer, shows our own students how their voices can promote social awareness and effect change. In his essay, "Beauty and Violence," Forest models how to construct a public argument that opens discussion on the topic of media exploitation. In a second selection, "High Tide in Tucson," Barbara Kingsolver shows us how to observe and then vividly describe the natural world and its small wonders before making that writerly leap into reflection about both her own life and the human condition. If there were ever a model for "the personal essay" or a contemporary version of Montaigne's essai, "High Tide in Tucson" is it. Finally, Margaret Talbot's delightful send up of Martha Stewart in "Les Trés Riches Heures de Martha Stewart" teaches us how to blend wit, research, and cultural analysis at the most sophisticated level. We could teach a semester's writing course using just these three authors. But who would want to stop there? In the sixth edition of The Prentice Hall Guide for College Writers, Barbara Ehrenreich, Neil Postman, and Deborah Tannen are still waiting to be read, as are Susan Estrich, Farley Mowat, Pico Tyer, Patricia Raybon, Wendell Berry, John Muir, Toni Cade Bambara, Jonathan Kozol, Helen Keller, Edward Abbey, and Mike Rose.

In its sixth edition, The Prentice Hall Guide for College Writers offers a host of new and continuing features that put writers in touch with other writers, with stimulating reading, and with advice about critical reading and writing that will place them in rhetorical situations and guide them as they move from idea to final draft.

NEW FEATURES

New to the sixth edition of The Prentice Hall Guide for College Writers are the following features:

EIGHTEEN NEW PROFESSIONAL AND STUDENT ESSAYS. The sixth edition features new selections from professional writers such as Barbara Kingsolver, Margaret Talbot, Deborah Tannen, David Ansen, Nicholas Lemann, Robin Morgan, Emily Prager, John O'Sullivan, and Jeremiah Creedon. In addition, new student selections by Adam Forest, Julie Bovard, La Mer Stepptoe, and Lauren Strain address topics such as media exploitation, rape and its consequences, multiracialness, and Native Americans in Hollywood films.

NEW CLUSTER OF ESSAYS IN ARGUING CHAPTER. The sixth edition also features a new group of three arguing essays representing three points of view (rather than just "pro" and "con") on the controversies surrounding the death penalty. Essays by Edward Koch, Robert Badinter, and John O'Sullivan create a conversation of argument and response that illustrates how a debate that seems to have only two possible sides can actually lead to multiple points of view.

UPDATED EMPHASIS ON WRITING WITH A COMPUTER. Essays such as "How the Web Works," by Gene Cowan and "Plotting a Net Gain," by Connie Koenenn provide information about the Internet while new research sections on accessing Internet sources and updated MLA and APA citation formats give students timely information on accessing, evaluating, and documenting Internet texts.

INTEGRATION OF INTERNET SITES IN THE CRITICAL READING PROCESS. The sixth edition also includes one question following each professional essay that asks students to dish a website with additional background information, an e-forum where the conversation started in the essay continues on-line, or a site with another point of view about the topic of the essay. This feature encourages students to use their Internet access as an integral part of their critical response to each professional essay.

INCREASED EMPHASIS ON GENRES FOR READING AND WRITING. The Prentice Hall Guide has always featured texts from a variety of genres that illustrate chapter assignments. In the sixth edition, the Evaluating chapter has an evaluation of the television show ER, by two British critics in the form of a letter debate, while the Observing and Explaining chapters include samples of an Internet posting and a transcript from a radio show. Other chapters feature genres such as letters, proposals, and journal entries as well as academic essays. Students are encouraged to consider a variety of genres as they assess their purpose, audience, and rhetorical situation.

CONTINUING KEY FEATURES

Continuing in the sixth edition of The Prentice Hall Guide for College Writers is a wide range of noteworthy features:

ANNOTATED INSTRUCTOR'S EDITION. The Annotated Instructor's Edition contains additional guidelines for teaching each chapter, teaching tips on critical reading, responding to assignments, and guiding peer group activities, and ESL teaching tips designed to alert teachers to possible problems and solutions for ESL writers.

ALTERNATE THEMATIC TABLE OF CONTENTS. The essays in the sixth edition combine to create thematic clusters of topics that reappear throughout the text: Race and Cultural Diversity, Gender Roles, Technology and the Internet, Environmental Issues, Education, Literacy and Language, Advertising and the Media, Social Issues, and a new section on Cultural Explorations.

EMPHASIS ON STUDENT WRITING. The sixth edition continues t0 showcase student writing, featuring the work of more than forty student writers from several colleges and universities. The sixth edition contains twenty-five full-length student essays and ten essays with sample prewriting materials, rough drafts, peer response sheets, and post-scripts.

LOGICAL SEQUENCE OF PURPOSE-BASED CHAPTERS. Aims and purposes, not rhetorical strategies, guide each writing assignment. Early chapters focus on invention strategies (observing, remembering, reading, and investigation), while later chapters emphasize exposition and argumentation (explaining, evaluating, problem solving, and arguing).

FOCUS ON WRITING PROCESSES. Every major chapter contains professional and student samples, rhetorical techniques, journal exercises, reading and writing activities, collaborative activities, peer-response guidelines, and revision suggestions designed to assist students with their work-in-progress.

JOURNAL WRITING. Throughout the text, write-to-learn activities help writers improve their critical reading skills, warm up for each assignment, and practice a variety of invention and shaping strategies.

MARGINAL QUOTATIONS. Nearly a hundred short quotations by composition teachers, researchers, essayists, novelists, and poets personalize for the inexperienced writer a larger community of writers still struggling with the same problems that each student faces.

AN INTRODUCTION TO MYTHS AND RITUALS FOR WRITING. Chapter One, "Writing Myths and Rituals," discounts some common myths about college writing courses, introduces the notion of writing rituals, and outlines the variety of journal writing used throughout the text. Rituals are crucial for all writers but especially so for novice writers. Effective rituals are simply those behavioral strategies that complement the cognitive and social strategies of the writing process. Illustrating a variety of possible writing rituals are quotations from a dozen professional writers on the nature of writing. These short quotations continue throughout the book, reminding students that writing is not some magical process, but rather a madness that has a method to it, a love that is built from labor, and a learning that is born of reading, thinking, observing, remembering, discussing, and writing.

AN ORIENTATION TO RHETORICAL SITUATION AND TO WRITING PROCESSES. Chapter Two, "Purposes and Processes for Writing," bases the writing process in the rhetorical situation (writer, subject, purpose, text, and audience). It restores the writer's intent or purpose (rather than a thesis sentence or a rhetorical strategy) as the driving force during the writing process. It demonstrates how meaning evolves from a variety of recursive, multidimensional, and hierarchical activities that we call the writing process. Finally, it reassures students that, because individual writing and learning styles differ, they will be encouraged to discover and articulate their own processes from a range of appropriate possibilities.

AIMS AND PURPOSES FOR WRITING. The text then turns to specific purposes and assignments for writing. Chapters Three through Six ("Observing," "Remembering," "Reading," and "Investigating") focus on invention strategies. These chapters illustrate how writing to learn is a natural part of learning to write. To promote reading, writing, discussing, revising, and learning, these chapters introduce four sources of invention—observing people, places, events, and objects; remembering people, places, and events; reading and responding to texts; and investigating information through interviews, surveys, and written sources. Although students write essays intended for a variety of audiences in each of these chapters, the emphasis is on invention strategies and on writer-based purposes for writing. Although this text includes expressive and transactional elements in every assignment, the direction of the overall sequence of assignments is from the more personal forms of discourse to the more public forms.

Chapters Seven through Ten ("Explaining," "Evaluating," "Problem Solving," and "Arguing") emphasize subject and audience-based purposes. The sequence in these chapters moves the student smoothly from exp...

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Customer Reviews

Great Book for College Writers
This is a great book for college writers. This book helps to understand more about the different types of essays. This book is mainly used for college for classes Composition I and II english classes including Oakton Community College.

Excellent
At received the book on the time and book condition was as described. Great service

student friendly text
I picked up a used copy of this text in a Good Will store. Read it and found myself learning a lot. I teach a writing course at the Comm. college level.The text addresses many issues that burgeoning college writers need to think about. As a developing writer myself, I value this text as a helpful resource. Adequate practice exercises and nice choice of professional and student writer's works.