Speaking of Writing: A Brief Rhetoric – with MLA 2021 Update


Book Description

Co-authored by a novelist and a scholar, Speaking of Writing follows four college students from diverse backgrounds as they face the challenges of reading, writing, and critical thinking in first-year composition classes and across the disciplines. Each chapter engages students in relatable, often humorous scenarios that focus on key challenges. Through its story-based approach, this brief rhetoric enacts process-based pedagogy, showing student writers grappling with fundamental questions: How can I apply my own strategies for success to new assignments? How can I maintain my own voice when asked to compose in an academic style? What do college professors mean by a thesis? Why is my argument weak, and how can I make it stronger? The book vividly dramatizes a draft-and-revision process that includes instructor feedback, peer review, and careful research.




Write Here: Developing Writing Skills in a Media-Driven World


Book Description

Write Here is designed to teach students essential reading and writing skills, using media examples to help explain academic concepts and provide opportunities for practice. It is adaptable; because it covers the basics of reading, writing, and the modes of writing, it is appropriate to use in developmental composition classrooms. However, it also covers such topics as logical fallacies, rhetoric, timed writing, academic writing, source integration, and MLA/APA documentation, making it appropriate for a first-year or “stretch” composition course. Many beginning writing students are underprepared and feel that writing just “isn’t for them.” The authors hope to dispel that myth by using media examples and a conversational tone to introduce and teach the material. Write Here provides examples that are interesting to students, while allowing them to connect to the subject matter on a more personal level—additionally, the process of analyzing the media helps students sharpen their reading, writing, and critical thinking skills.




Academic Writing Now: A Brief Guide for Busy Students


Book Description

This is a book for real students, people with full and active lives. Academic Writing Now: A Brief Guide for Busy Students covers the basics of the introductory college writing course in a concise, student-friendly format. Each chapter concentrates on a crucial element of composing an academic essay and is capable of being read in a single sitting. The book also includes numerous “timesaver tips,” along with warnings about frequent student errors—all designed to help students make the most of one of their most limited and precious resources: time.




The World is a Text: Writing About Visual and Popular Culture


Book Description

Wherever we look today, popular culture greets us with “texts” that make implicit arguments; this book helps students to think and write critically about these texts. The World Is a Text teaches critical reading, writing, and argument in the context of pop-culture and visual examples, showing students how to “read” everyday objects and visual texts with basic semiotics. The book shows how texts of all kinds, from a painting to a university building to a pair of sneakers, make complex arguments through their use of signs and symbols, and shows students how to make these arguments in their own essays. This new edition is rich with images, real-world examples, writing and discussion prompts, and examples of academic and student writing. The first part of the book is a rhetoric covering argumentation, research, the writing process, and adapting from high-school to college writing, while the second part explores writing about specific cultural topics. Notes, instruction, and advice about research are woven into the text, with research instruction closely tied to the topic being discussed. New to the updated compact edition are chapters on fashion, sports, and nature and the environment.




On Eloquence


Book Description

On Eloquence questions the common assumption that eloquence is merely a subset of rhetoric, a means toward a rhetorical end. Denis Donoghue, an eminent and prolific critic of the English language, holds that this assumption is erroneous. In this book, Donoghue maintains that eloquence should be examined independent of mere rhetoric and that it has its own intrinsic value.




Essays and Arguments: A Handbook for Writing Student Essays


Book Description

How does one help undergraduate students learn quickly how to produce effectively organized, persuasive, well-reasoned essays? This book offers a straightforward, systematic introduction to some of the key elements of the construction of arguments in essay form. The focus here is on practical advice that will prove immediately useful to students—recommended procedures are emphasized, and detailed examples of academic and student writing are provided throughout. The book introduces the basics of argumentation before moving on to the structure and organization of essays. Planning and outlining the essay, writing strong thesis statements, organizing coherent paragraphs, and writing effective introductions and conclusions are among the subjects discussed. A separate section concisely explores issues specific to essays about literary works.




The Argument Handbook


Book Description

The Argument Handbook is a classroom text for first-year composition that is designed to help students understand complex rhetorical situations and navigate the process of transforming private thoughts into persuasive, public writing. The book is organized around three key lenses of argumentation that help students focus on the practical challenges of persuasive writing: invention, audience, and authority. Its modular organization makes it easier for students to find what they need and easier for instructors to assign the content that fits their course.




Academic Writing: An Introduction - Fourth Edition


Book Description

Academic Writing has been widely acclaimed in all its editions as a superb textbook—and an important contribution to the pedagogy of introducing students to the conventions of academic writing. The book seeks to introduce student readers to the lively community of research and writing beyond the classroom, with its complex interactions, values, and goals. It presents writing from a range of disciplines in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences, cultivating students’ awareness of the subtle differences in genre. The fourth edition has been revised throughout and includes a new chapter on visual rhetoric, a new section on the academic peer review system, updated examples, expanded exercises, and new glossary entries.




The Argument Toolbox


Book Description

Drawing on the pedagogy, rhetorical theory, and student editor insights of The Argument Handbook, The Argument Toolbox is a very concise resource designed to help first year composition students, rhetoric and writing students, and first year seminar students build persuasive arguments in various genres. Like the more comprehensive text, The Argument Toolbox is organized and designed so that students can zero in on the content they need to respond to an assignment when faced with a blank screen, a hard deadline, and a skeptical audience.




The Curious Writer


Book Description

For courses in First-Year Composition - Rhetoric. Puts inquiry at the heart of good writing We write to learn as much as we do to express what we already know. In his remarkably personal and engaging voice, Bruce Ballenger makes that powerful concept central to The Curious Writer, Concise Edition. The Curious Writer, Concise Edition doesn't read like a textbook or provide a formula for composing essays. Instead, it encourages students to suspend judgment, to ask questions, and to seek answers much like academics do. Yet it covers a wide range of genres beyond the academic essay-narrative, profile, review, ethnography, argument, and more-all with a distinctive approach and "personality" that is lacking in other texts. It also reinforces the assumption that genres are malleable with a new chapter on repurposing or "re-genre-ing." Students love that this book helps them learn to write by pursuing their own curiosity. Teachers appreciate that Ballenger provides ample opportunities for students to develop the habits of mind necessary to become critical thinkers and curious writers. Also available with MyWritingLab(TM) MyWritingLab is an online homework, tutorial, and assessment program designed to work with this text to engage students and improve results. Within its structured environment, students practice what they learn, test their understanding, and pursue a personalized study plan that helps them better absorb course material and understand difficult concepts. Note: You are purchasing a standalone product; MyWritingLab does not come packaged with this content. Students, if interested in purchasing this title with MyWritingLab, ask your instructor for the correct package ISBN and Course ID. Instructors, contact your Pearson representative for more information. If you would like to purchase both the physical text and MyWritingLab, search for: 0134150791 / 9780134150796 The Curious Writer, Concise Edition Plus MyWritingLab without Pearson eText -- Access Card Package Package consists of: 0133933296 / 9780133933291 MyWritingLab without Pearson eText -- Access Card 013393330X / 9780133933307 MyWritingLab without Pearson eText -- Inside Star Sticker 0134120701 / 9780134120706 The Curious Writer, Concise Edition