Writing That Makes Sense, 2nd Edition


Book Description

The second edition of Writing That Makes Sense takes students through the fundamentals of the writing process and explores the basic steps of critical thinking. Drawing upon over twenty years of experience teaching college composition and professional writing, David S. Hogsette combines relevant writing pedagogy and practical assignments with the basics of critical thinking to provide students with step-by-step guides for successful academic writing in a variety of rhetorical modes. New in the second edition: •Expanded discussion of how to write effective thesis statements for informative, persuasive, evaluative, and synthesis essays, including helpful thesis statement templates. •Extensive templates introducing students to conventions of academic discourse, including integrating outside sources, interacting with other writers’ ideas, and dialoguing with multiple perspectives. •Examples of academic writing from different disciplines illustrating essay titles, abstracts, thesis statements, introductions, conclusions, and voice. •Expanded discussion of voice in academic writing, including an exploration of active and passive voice constructions in different disciplines and tips on how to edit for clarity. •A new chapter on writing in the disciplines. •Updated sample student papers. •New readings with examples of opposing views and multiple perspectives.




Writing Sense


Book Description

Writing is all about making meaning. The prospect of teaching writing to a classroom full of students—some who speak English and some who don't, can be overwhelming. When students learning English are at different levels, the task is even more challenging. Writing Sense: Integrated Reading and Writing Lessons for English Language Learners outlines the classroom conditions necessary for successful writing instruction with English language learners, whether in writing workshop and/or small-group instruction. It includes 68 classroom-tested lessons for grades K 8 that show kids at all levels of language acquisition how to make connections, ask questions, visualize (make mental images), infer, determine importance, synthesize, monitor meaning and comprehension, and use fix-up strategies. The five main sections are geared to the stages of language proficiency, and lessons are divided into younger and older students, spanning kindergarten through to grade eight. There are extensive lists of suggested books for mentor texts as well as lists of mentor authors to facilitate teachers' planning and instruction.




Writing That Makes Sense


Book Description

Description: Students often face a daunting dilemma in academia when it comes to writing. In their composition courses they are encouraged to express their emotions, find themselves, construct their own meanings, discover their voices, and own their identities through writing. But when they are asked to write lab reports, history papers, sociological studies, or to write discipline specific documents for their majors, their professors aren't much interested in self-expression, self-esteem, identity politics, or endlessly open-ended non-answers in search of a question. Their professors want clear writing that makes sense and that evidences critical thinking. What are students to do? Writing That Makes Sense takes students through the basics of the writing process and critical thinking, and it teaches them how to write various types of academic essays they are likely to encounter in their academic careers. Drawing on nearly twenty years of experience in teaching college composition and professional writing, David S. Hogsette combines relevant writing pedagogy and practical assignments with the basics of critical thinking and logical thought to provide students with step-by-step guides for successful writing in academia. Writing That Makes Sense includes many professional essays and articles from a variety of voices often underrepresented in academia today, thus introducing students to a wider intellectual diversity. Students will also benefit from a chapter on information literacy that provides practical tips on engaging the research process and writing research papers. About the Contributor(s): David S. Hogsette is Associate Professor of English and Writing Coordinator at the Old Westbury campus of the New York Institute of Technology, where he teaches composition, professional writing, and various upper-level literature courses. His teaching directly impacts his scholarship, and he has published articles and delivered lectures at national and international conferences on literary topics related to English Romanticism, Gothic literature, fantasy literature, science fiction, and theocentric approaches to literary studies.




Writing That Makes Sense


Book Description

Description: Students often face a daunting dilemma in academia when it comes to writing. In their composition courses they are encouraged to express their emotions, find themselves, construct their own meanings, discover their voices, and own their identities through writing. But when they are asked to write lab reports, history papers, sociological studies, or to write discipline specific documents for their majors, their professors aren't much interested in self-expression, self-esteem, identity politics, or endlessly open-ended non-answers in search of a question. Their professors want clear writing that makes sense and that evidences critical thinking. What are students to do? Writing That Makes Sense takes students through the basics of the writing process and critical thinking, and it teaches them how to write various types of academic essays they are likely to encounter in their academic careers. Drawing on nearly twenty years of experience in teaching college composition and professional writing, David S. Hogsette combines relevant writing pedagogy and practical assignments with the basics of critical thinking and logical thought to provide students with step-by-step guides for successful writing in academia. Writing That Makes Sense includes many professional essays and articles from a variety of voices often underrepresented in academia today, thus introducing students to a wider intellectual diversity. Students will also benefit from a chapter on information literacy that provides practical tips on engaging the research process and writing research papers. About the Contributor(s): David S. Hogsette is Associate Professor of English and Writing Coordinator at the Old Westbury campus of the New York Institute of Technology, where he teaches composition, professional writing, and various upper-level literature courses. His teaching directly impacts his scholarship, and he has published articles and delivered lectures at national and international conferences on literary topics related to English Romanticism, Gothic literature, fantasy literature, science fiction, and theocentric approaches to literary studies.




The Sense of Style


Book Description

“Charming and erudite," from the author of Rationality and Enlightenment Now, "The wit and insight and clarity he brings . . . is what makes this book such a gem.” —Time.com Why is so much writing so bad, and how can we make it better? Is the English language being corrupted by texting and social media? Do the kids today even care about good writing—and why should we care? From the author of The Better Angels of Our Nature and Enlightenment Now. In this entertaining and eminently practical book, the cognitive scientist, dictionary consultant, and New York Times–bestselling author Steven Pinker rethinks the usage guide for the twenty-first century. Using examples of great and gruesome modern prose while avoiding the scolding tone and Spartan tastes of the classic manuals, he shows how the art of writing can be a form of pleasurable mastery and a fascinating intellectual topic in its own right. The Sense of Style is for writers of all kinds, and for readers who are interested in letters and literature and are curious about the ways in which the sciences of mind can illuminate how language works at its best.




Why I Write


Book Description

George Orwell set out ‘to make political writing into an art’, and to a wide extent this aim shaped the future of English literature – his descriptions of authoritarian regimes helped to form a new vocabulary that is fundamental to understanding totalitarianism. While 1984 and Animal Farm are amongst the most popular classic novels in the English language, this new series of Orwell’s essays seeks to bring a wider selection of his writing on politics and literature to a new readership. In Why I Write, the first in the Orwell’s Essays series, Orwell describes his journey to becoming a writer, and his movement from writing poems to short stories to the essays, fiction and non-fiction we remember him for. He also discusses what he sees as the ‘four great motives for writing’ – ‘sheer egoism’, ‘aesthetic enthusiasm’, ‘historical impulse’ and ‘political purpose’ – and considers the importance of keeping these in balance. Why I Write is a unique opportunity to look into Orwell’s mind, and it grants the reader an entirely different vantage point from which to consider the rest of the great writer’s oeuvre. 'A writer who can – and must – be rediscovered with every age.' — Irish Times




Elements of Fiction


Book Description

The renowned novelist and author of This Year You Write a Novel shares a “compact but insight-rich” guide to fiction writing (Publishers Weekly). In his essential writing guide, This Year You Write Your Novel, Walter Mosley supplied aspiring writers with the basic tools to write a novel in one year. In this complementary follow up, Mosley guides the writer through the elements of not just any fiction writing, but the kind of writing that transcends convention and truly stands out. For writers who want to approach the genius of Melville, Dickens, or Twain, The Elements of Fiction is a must-read. Mosley demonstrates how to master fiction’s most essential elements: character and char-acter development, plot and story, voice and narrative, context and description, and more. The result is a vivid depiction of the writing process, from the blank page to the first draft to rewriting, and rewriting again. Throughout, The Elements of Fiction is enriched by brilliant demonstrative examples that Mosley himself has written here for the first time.




Holding On to Hope


Book Description

A healing book for those in the wake of life’s devastating storms. We can never plan for the unexpected turns of this life that sometimes lead to great personal suffering. Sometimes that suffering can overshadow everything and threaten to pull us under. Nancy Guthrie knows what it is to be plunged into life’s abyss. Framing her own story of staggering loss and soaring hope with the biblical story of Job, she takes you by the hand and guides you on a pathway through pain—straight to the heart of God. Holding On to Hope offers an uplifting perspective, not only for those experiencing monumental loss, but for anyone going through difficulty and failure. (Includes an 8-week study on the book of Job for readers who want to dig deeper into what the Bible says about dealing with suffering and grief.)




Quack this Way


Book Description

Two friends, both of them vocational snoots, sat down to film an interview in February 2006. Their subjects: language and writing. The interviewee drove more than an hour, from Claremont to downtown Los Angeles. The interviewer flew from Dallas. They spoke on film for 67 minutes and then walked uphill to a nearby seafood restaurant, where they continued the running conversation they had started five years earlier. They liked each other, and they seemed to understand each other. The rest is history. This is the last long interview with David Foster Wallace.




A Poetry Handbook


Book Description

With passion, wit, and good common sense, the celebrated poet Mary Oliver tells of the basic ways a poem is built-meter and rhyme, form and diction, sound and sense. Drawing on poems from Robert Frost, Elizabeth Bishop, and others, Oliver imparts an extraordinary amount of information in a remarkably short space. "Stunning" (Los Angeles Times). Index.