Longman Writer, The, Concise Edition

Description

• Step-by-step coverage of the writing process features a separate chapter on every stage from prewriting through drafting, revising, and editing–and offers students opportunities for practice through extensive activities and collaborative exercises.
• The widely-praised emphasis on purpose, audience, and point of view first appears in the chapter on prewriting and is then reiterated in assignments and commentary throughout the text, helping students to see that writers make decisions based in their writing context.
• Visual pedagogy designed for how today’s students learn highlights key ideas and processes at-a-glance for easy reference and review:

o         Process Diagrams spotlight each step of the writing process, showing students how each stage of composing contributes to an effective piece of writing (Chs 2-9). 

o         Development Diagrams illustrate each pattern of development, culling the distinctive features of each type of writing out of the narrative in a detailed yet clear summary (Chs 10-18).

o         New Essay Structure Diagrams outline one professional reading in each method of development chapter to help students recognize how a reading is organized and supported (Chs 10-18). 

• One student sample is shown at a different stage of development in every chapter in Part II so that students can see how ideas develop and drafts change shape–and so they can differentiate between revising and editing.
• One annotated student paper in each method-of-development chapter in Part III illustrates decisions student writers make for each rhetorical pattern.  Subsequent pages of commentary, analysis, and “before and after” versions of student work are widely praised for helping students see how every decision a writer makes contributes to coherent and clear writing.
• A full suite of apparatus includes comprehensive assignment sets accompanying every reading:

o         A “Pre-Reading Journal Entry” before each reading and a “Writing Assignment Using a Journal Entry as a Starting Point” after illustrate the reading/ writing connection and the process involved in shaping a piece of writing;

o         “Questions for Close Reading” and “Questions About the Writer’s Craft” ensure reading comprehension and rhetorical reading;

o         Writing assignments asking students to write an essay using the same pattern(s) as the selection are followed by writing assignments inviting students to mix the methods of development–ensuring that the “modes” are seen as strategies and not ends in themselves.

• Writing in three different real-life writing contexts, “On Campus,” “At Home or in the Community,” and “On the Job,” is emphasized in the “Assignments with a Specific Purpose, Audience, and Point of View” at the end of each pattern chapter to help students recognize real-life applications of the concepts and skills they learn outside of the academic classroom.
• A wide variety of essays includes classics along with new and previously unanthologized works in order to appeal to varied student interests and stimulate strong writing on range of topics such as gender, education, race, mass culture, family life, mortality, and others.

I. THE READING PROCESS

1. Becoming a Strong Reader

Stage 1: Get an Overview of the Selection

Stage 2: Deepen Your Sense of the Selection

Stage 3: Evaluate the Selection

A Model Annotated Reading

Assessing Visuals in a Reading

            Assessing an Image: An Example

            Assessing a Graph: An Example

        Ellen Goodman, “Family Counterculture”

II. THE WRITING PROCESS

2. Getting Started Through Prewriting

Use Prewriting to Get Started

            Keep a Journal

            The Pre-Reading Journal Entry

             Understand the Boundaries of the Assignment

             Determine Your Purpose, Audience, Tone, and Point of View

            Discover Your Essay’s Limited Subject

             Generate Raw Material About Your Limited Subject

             Organize the Raw Material

Activities: Getting Started Through Prewriting

3. Identifying a Thesis

What Is a Thesis?

Finding a Thesis

Writing an Effective Thesis

             Tone and Point of View

             Implied Pattern of Development

              Including a Plan of Development

1.      Don’t Write a Highly Opinionated Statement

2.      Don’t Make an Announcement

3.      Don’t Make a Factual Statement

4.      Don’t Make a Broad Statement

Arriving at an Effective Thesis

Placing the Thesis in an Essay

Activities: Identifying a Thesis

4. Supporting the Thesis with Evidence

What Is Evidence?

How Do You Find Evidence?

            How the Patterns of Development Help Generate Evidence

Characteristics of Evidence

            The Evidence Is Relevant and Unified

            The Evidence Is Specific

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Clear, step-by-step writing instruction, ample annotated student essays, and extensive practice opportunities for writing have made The Longman Writer one of the most successful methods-of-development guides for college writing.

The Longman Writer draws on decades of teaching experience to integrate the best of the “product” and “process” approaches to writing.  Its particular strengths include an emphasis on the reading-writing connection, a focus on invention and revision, attention to the fact that patterns blend in actual writing, and an abundance of class-tested activities and assignments—more than 350 in all.

Clear, step-by-step writing instruction, ample annotated student essays, and extensive practice opportunities for writing have made The Longman Writer one of the most successful methods-of-development guides for college writing.