Strategies for Successful Writing : A Rhetoric, Research Guide, Reader and Handbook (7th Edition)
- Book Review,
by James A. Reinking, Robert von der Osten
From the Back Cover
OFFERING TEACHERS EXCEPTIONAL FLEXIBILITY; OFFERING STUDENTS EXCEPTIONAL VALUE! Written in a clear, engaging style, Strategies for Successful Writing combines four books — a rhetoric, a research guide, a reader, and a handbook — into one convenient, flexible, and economically priced text. Moreover, our Free Words Upon Request program allows you to package a free dictionary or thesaurus with Strategies for Successful Writing, making it the best value available to students.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
The seventh edition of Strategies for Successful Writing: A Rhetoric, Research Guide, Reader, and Handbook is a comprehensive textbook that offers ample material for a full-year composition course. Instructors teaching a one-term course can make selections from Chapters 1-17, from whatever types of specialized writing suit the needs of their students, and from appropriate essays in the Reader. Because we strongly believe that an effective composition textbook should address the student directly, we have aimed for a style that is conversational yet clear and concise. We believe that our style invites students into the book, lessens their apprehensions about writing, and provides a model for their own prose. This style complements our strong student-based approach to writing, and together they help create a text that genuinely meets student needs. Changes in the Seventh Edition The enthusiastic response to the six previous editions both by teachers and students has been most gratifying. The seventh edition retains the many popular features of the previous ones and incorporates a number of improvements suggested by users and reviewers, that should considerably enhance the utility of the text. Among these changes the following are noteworthy. • There is a new chapter on strategies for successful writing to help students master college writing. The chapter includes pointers on writing summaries and critiques. • The argument chapter has been updated and expanded to include new information on exploratory arguments and more suggestions on organizing arguments. • The chapter on effective sentences has been revised to stress the basic strategies students can use to write more powerful sentences. • The chapter on the research paper includes more information on using online catalogs and databases, material on using visuals in reports, and a very handy checklist that can be used for students writing research papers. The text features the most recent versions of APA (2001) and MLA (2003) guidelines. • Two new sample student essays provide a more contemporary flavor. • Eleven of the essays in the Reader, one-fourth of the total, are new. These additions increase its coverage of contemporary subjects and expand its discussion potential. • The Sentence Elements section of the handbook has been revised to make it clearer. The individual-sentence exercises in the section are also new. • Assorted updates and additions throughout the text, too numerous to mention individually, should help make the text even more effective. The Rhetoric In addition to these improvements, the text offers many other noteworthy features. The Rhetoric consists of nineteen chapters, grouped into four parts. The first part includes three chapters. Chapter 1 introduces students to the purposes of writing; the need for audience awareness, which includes a discussion of discourse communities; and the qualities of good writing. Chapter 2 offers suggestions for effective reading. Chapter 3 looks at the planning and drafting stages. Chapter 4 takes students through the various revision stages, starting with a systematic procedure for revising the whole essay and then moving to pointers for revising its component parts. Sets of checklists pose key questions for students to consider. Chapters 3 and 4 are unified by an unfolding case history that includes the first draft of a student paper, the initial revision marked with changes, and the final version. Notes in the margin highlight key features of the finished paper. Students can relate the sequence of events to their own projects as they work through the various stages. Both chapters offer suggestions for using word-processing programs, and Chapter 4 explains peer evaluation of drafts, collaborative writing, and maintaining and reviewing a portfolio. The ten chapters in the second part (Chapters 5-14) feature the various strategies, or modes, used to develop papers. These strategies, which follow a general progression from less to more complex, are presented as natural ways of thinking, as problem-solving strategies, and therefore as effective ways of organizing writing. One chapter is devoted to each strategy. This part concludes with a chapter on mixing the writing strategies, which explains and shows that writers frequently use these patterns in assorted combinations for various purposes. Planning and writing guidelines are presented for problem/solution and evaluation reports, two common types that rely on a combination of strategies. Except for Chapter 14, the discussion in each chapter follows a similar approach, first explaining the key elements of the strategy; next pointing out typical classroom and on-the-job applications to show students its practicality; and then providing specific planning, drafting, and revising guidelines. Practical heuristic questions are also posed. A complete student essay, accompanied by questions, follows the discussion section. These essays represent realistic, achievable goals and spur student confidence, while the questions reinforce the general principles of good writing and underscore the points we make in our discussions. Twenty carefully chosen writing suggestions follow the questions in most chapters. All chapters conclude with a section entitled "Critical Edge." These sections, intended for above-average students, explain and illustrate how they can advance their writing purpose by synthesizing material from various sources. Synthesis, of course, helps students develop and hone their critical reading and thinking skills. Furthermore, the Annotated Instructor's Edition includes suggestions for using the Reader essays and writing strategies to build assignments around themes. In the third part, we shift from full-length essays to the elements that make them up. Chapter 15 first discusses paragraph unity; it then takes up the topic sentence, adequate development, organization, coherence, and finally introductory, transitional, and concluding paragraphs. Throughout this chapter, as elsewhere, carefully selected examples and exercises form an integral part of the instruction. Chapter 16 focuses on various strategies for creating effective sentences. Such strategies as coordinating and subordinating ideas and using parallelism help students to increase the versatility of their writing. The concluding section offers practical advice on crafting and arranging sentences so that they work together harmoniously. Some instructors may wish to discuss the chapters on paragraphs and sentences in connection with revision. Chapter 17, designed to help students improve their writing style, deals with words and their effects. We distinguish between abstract and concrete words as well as between specific and general terms, and we also discuss the dictionary and thesaurus. Levels of diction—formal, informal, and technical—and how to use them are explained, as are tone, various types of figurative language, and irony. The chapter concludes by pointing out how to recognize and avoid wordiness, euphemisms, cliches, mixed metaphors, and sexist language. The fourth and final part of the Rhetoric concentrates on three specialized types of college and on-the-job writing. Chapter 18 offers practical advice on studying for exams, assessing test questions, and writing essay answers. To facilitate student comprehension, we analyze both good and poor answers to the same exam question and provide an exercise that requires students to perform similar analyses. Chapter 19 uses Stephen Crane's "The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky" as a springboard for its discussion. The chapter focuses on plot, point of view, character, setting, symbols, irony, and theme—the elements students will most likely be asked to write about. For each element, we first present basic features and then offer writing guidelines. Diverse examples illustrate these elements. The chapter ends with sections that detail the development of a student paper and explain how to include the views of others when writing about literature. Like other parts of the text, Chapter 20 speaks to a practical reality by reminding students that the value of writing extends beyond the English classroom. Sample letters address a variety of practical situations—for example, applying for a summer job. The Research Guide The Research Guide consists of three chapters. Chapter 21 is a thorough and practical guide to writing library research papers. A sample pacing schedule not only encourages students to plan their work and meet their deadlines but also enables them to track their progress. As in Chapters 2 and 3, a progressive case history gradually evolves into an annotated student paper, which includes the results of a personal interview, thus demonstrating that primary research can reinforce secondary research. Chapter 22 details and illustrates the correct formats for bibliographical references and in-text citations for both the MLA and APA systems of documentation. Guidelines are based on the 2001 edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association and current online updates as well as the 2003 edition of The MLA Style Manual. The chapter also explains how to handle the various types of quotations and how to avoid plagiarism. Our detailed treatment in Chapters 20 and 21 should make supplemental handouts or a separate research-paper guide unnecessary. Chapter 23 offers an in-depth discussion of interview, questionnaire, and direct-observation reports. After pointing out the nature, usefulness, and requirements of primary research, we explain how to plan and write each report, concluding with an annotated student model that illustrates the guidelines. The Reader The Reader, sequenced to follow the order of the strategies presented in the Rhetoric, expands the utility of the text by providing a collection of forty-four carefully selected professional models that illustrate the various writing strategies and display a wide variety of style, tone, and subject matter. These essays, together with the nine student models that accompany the various strategy chapters, should make a separate reader unnecessary. Supplementing the chapter on reading strategies, the Reader comes with reading suggestions for each strategy that detail how to read the essays of a given type, how to read essays critically, and how to read the essays as a writer. Each essay clearly illustrates the designated pattern, each has been thoroughly class tested for student interest, and each provides a springboard for a stimulating discussion. In making our selections we have aimed for balance and variety: Some are popular classics by acknowledged prose masters; some, anthologized for the first time, are by fresh, new writers. Some are straightforward and simple, some challenging and complex. Some adopt a humorous, lighthearted approach, some a serious, thoughtful one. Some take a liberal stance, some a conservative one; and some address ethnic, gender, and cultural diversity. A few are rather lengthy; most are relatively brief. The first essay in each strategy section is annotated in the margin to show which features of the strategy are included. These annotations not only facilitate student understanding but also help link the Rhetoric and Reader into an organic whole. A brief biographical note about the author and a photograph, when available, precede each selection, and stimulating questions designed to enhance student understanding of structure and strategy follow it. In addition, a segment entitled "Toward Key Insights" poses one or more broad-based questions prompted by the essay's content. Answering these questions, either in discussion or writing, should help students gain a deeper understanding of important issues. Finally, we include a writing assignment suggested by the essay's topic. The Handbook The comprehensive Handbook, which features tab indexing on each page for easy access to all material, consists of five parts: "Sentence Elements," "Editing to Correct Sentence Errors," "Editing to Correct Faulty Punctuation and Mechanics," "Spelling," and "Glossary of Word Usage." Explanations skirt unneeded grammatical terminology and are reinforced by sets of sentence exercises in the first three sections. The section on "Sentence Elements" explains how students can use these elements to improve their writing skills. We also include connected-discourse exercises—unfolding narratives that engage and retain student interest and therefore facilitate learning—in the "Sentence Errors" and "Punctuation and Mechanics" sections. Extra sets of twenty-item exercises that parallel those in the Handbook are available upon request to instructors who adopt the book. The "Spelling" unit presents four useful spelling rules and an extensive list of commonly misspelled words. The "Glossary of Word Usage" offers similarly comprehensive coverage of troublesome usages. Instructors can use the Handbook either as a reference guide or as a basis for class discussion.
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