Successful College Writing with 2009 MLA and 2010 APA Updates

927 Pages·2008·11.56 MB·English

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Successful
College Writing
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For Bedford/St. Martin’s
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2009929649 (with Handbook)
2009929904 (without Handbook)
Copyright © 2010 (APA update), 2009, 2006, 2003, 2000 by Bedford/St. Martin’s
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmit-
ted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, ex-
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Manufactured in the United States of America.
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For information, write: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 75 Arlington Street,
Boston, MA 02116 (617-399-4000)
ISBN-10: 0-312-66774-4 (Student Edition with Handbook; MLA/APA update)
ISBN-13: 978-0-312-66774-0 (Student Edition with Handbook; MLA/APA update)
ISBN-10: 0-312-61916-2 (Student Edition without Handbook; MLA/APA update)
ISBN-13: 978-0-312-61916-9 (Student Edition without Handbook; MLA/APA update)
ISBN-10: 0-312-53280-6 (Instructor’s Annotated Edition)
ISBN-13: 978-0-312-53280-2 (Instructor’s Annotated Edition)
Acknowledgments
Acknowledgments and copyrights appear at the back of the book on pages 845–48, which constitute
an extension of the copyright page.
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F O U R T H
E D I T I O N
Successful
College Writing
SKILLS | STRATEGIES | LEARNING STYLES
KATHLEEN T. McWHORTER
Niagara County Community College
BEDFORD/ST. MARTIN’S
Boston (cid:129) New York
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Copyright 2010 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).
Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.
PP RR EE FFAACC EE
My goal in writing Successful College Writing was to create a fi rst-year composition text that
covers the skills other college-level texts assume students already possess. The overwhelm-
ingly positive response from instructors who have used the fi rst three editions confi rms my
own experience: Many students today need a review of basic writing conventions before
they can be equipped with college-level skills in writing, reading, or critical thinking. Suc-
cessful College Writing in its fourth edition continues to address this reality.
Through its unique, highly visual, student-centered approach, Successful College Writing
teaches students essential skills while guiding them through the writing strategies and ac-
tivities that form the core of composition instruction. With this revision, I sought to pro-
vide more guidance for students in critical reading and paragraph writing, to strengthen
coverage of topics that are integral to students’ success in college, and to make the reading
selections even more appealing to students and instructors.
PROVEN FEATURES OF SUCCESSFUL COLLEGE WRITING
True to its goal of offering more coverage of essential skills, Successful College Writing pro-
vides abundant guidance and support for inexperienced writers along with thorough help
with reading and study skills.
Extensive Support for Inexperienced
College Writers Throughout
Every chapter of Successful College Writing provides practical, student-oriented instruction,
along with extra help for those students who need it.
Detailed coverage of each stage of the writing process. Part Two of the
text, “Strategies for Writing Essays,” consists of six chapters that cover each stage of the
writing process in detail, with plenty of skill-building exercises, many of them collabora-
tive; a running student example; and Essay in Progress activities that lead students through
each step in writing an essay.
Appealing, helpful visuals. Because inexperienced writers often are more comfortable
with images than with text, Successful College Writing employs a visual approach to writing
instruction. The Quick Starts at the beginning of each chapter provide engaging images for
students to respond to. In addition, Graphic Organizers — maps that display relationships
among ideas — present students with an alternative to traditional outlines. Students are en-
couraged to use the Graphic Organizers as tools both for analyzing readings and for planning
and revising their own essays. Revision Flowcharts help students systematically read their
own essays with a critical eye and revise them as well as review those of their peers, and other
vv
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vi | PREFACE
figures and boxes reinforce points made in the text and summarize information. Finally, new
Visualizing the Reading activities following one of the readings in each chapter in Parts Two
and Three give students a clear, simple way to chart key features of the reading, with the first
part of each chart done for them to provide guidance.
Practical, step-by-step writing assignments. Each chapter in Part Three cov-
ers one of the patterns of development that students will frequently encounter in college
and on the job. The chapters in Part Three, as well as the chapter on writing arguments
in Part Four and on writing a literary analysis in Part Six, include Guided Writing As-
signments that lead students step by step through the process of writing an essay. These
guided assignments give student writers the support they need, whether they are working
in class or on their own. The assignments will also appeal to faculty members who often
have limited time to become familiar with a complex textbook.
Comprehensive coverage of research and documentation. Because many
students are called upon to work with sources early in their college careers and because
technological advancements and the Internet have made such source-based writing in-
creasingly difficult, Successful College Writing provides three full chapters on writing with
sources, covering both electronic and print sources. Students learn to locate sources and
take effective notes, evaluate a source’s relevancy and reliability, synthesize and integrate
sources, avoid plagiarism, and properly use MLA and APA documentation formats, in-
cluding updated MLA guidelines.
Unique emphasis on learning styles. Because students learn in different ways,
they learn to write in different ways as well, yet most writing texts do not take these dif-
ferences into account. Successful College Writing encourages students to explore alternative
writing strategies and provides the tools to approach writing as a flexible, multifaceted
process, alleviating some of the frustration students often feel.
In this text, I focus on four learning styles that are relevant for writing: verbal versus
spatial learning, creative versus pragmatic learning, concrete versus abstract learning, and
social versus independent learning. A brief questionnaire in Chapter 2 enables students to
assess their learning styles. Recognizing that no one strategy works for every student, the
text includes a variety of strategies for generating ideas and revising an essay. Alternative
strategies are identified by the “Learning Style Options” icon Learning Style Options found in
the margins throughout the text.
Thorough reference handbook. The handbook in Part Seven covers basic gram-
mar, sentence problems, punctuation, mechanics, spelling, and ESL troublespots. It also
reinforces students’ learning with plenty of opportunities for practice. The handbook in-
cludes hand-corrected examples, key grammatical terms defined in the margin, helpful
charts and boxes, and sentence and paragraph exercises. Cross-references direct students
to additional grammar exercises online at Exercise Central.
Emphasis on Reading and Study Skills
Over the years, my work with students has convinced me that skills taught in isolation are
seldom learned well or applied. Because reading and study skills are essential to successful
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PREFACE | vii
writing, instruction in these skills is integrated throughout Successful College Writing. By
becoming profi cient, enthusiastic readers, students learn to be better writers and improve
their chances for success not only in the writing classroom but also in their other courses
as well.
Complete chapter on active, critical reading. To provide students with
solid, proven strategies for working with text, the Guide for Active Reading in Chapter 3
helps students improve their comprehension and build skills that they can apply to the
readings within this text as well as to those that they encounter in their other college
classes.
Thorough coverage of reading skills throughout. The reading skills that
are taught in Chapter 3 are reinforced in each of the chapters on the patterns of devel-
opment. As students develop their writing skills by writing a particular type of essay,
they simultaneously learn practical strategies for reading that type of essay. In addition,
Chapter 18, “Reading Arguments,” gives students guidelines for analyzing and evaluat-
ing arguments.
High-interest readings. Students who enjoy what they are reading become more
profi cient readers. Therefore, the professional and student readings in this text were care-
fully chosen to interest students as well as to function as strong rhetorical models. The
professional readings come from a wide range of sources, including newspapers, popular
magazines, special-interest magazines, blogs, other Web sites, textbooks, and scholarly
journals, representing the diverse texts students encounter in both their personal and aca-
demic lives. Authors include such well-known writers as Amy Tan, William Safi re, Barbara
Ehrenreich, Dorothy Allison, and Ilan Stavans.
Attention to study skills. Successful College Writing gives students practical survival
strategies that they can use not only in their writing course but in all their college courses.
In addition to guidelines for reading different types of texts, Successful College Writing
includes excerpts from college textbooks in marketing, biology, and communication; prac-
tical advice on study strategies in Chapter 24 on essay examinations; and useful, often
interactive advice on college life, self-assessment, and study skills in Chapter 1, which
incorporates much of the former Keys to Academic Success section.
NEW TO THE FOURTH EDITION
The main goals of the revision — based on feedback from instructors and students who
used the text — were to strengthen the book’s advice for succeeding in college, especially
the coverage of academic reading and writing; to give students more help with paragraph
writing; and to update the book with current and engaging professional readings and
student writing. We also set out to make it more engaging and easier to use by tightening
the prose; reducing duplication of advice within chapters; and developing a new, more
contemporary, and more navigable design.
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viii | PREFACE
Greater emphasis on college “survival skills” and academic reading
and writing. The early chapters of the book have been signifi cantly changed and ex-
panded to give students the thorough grounding in academic expectations they need for
college success. A new Chapter 1, “Succeeding in College,” incorporates new advice on
topics such as procrastination and plagiarism with advice on time management and study
skills formerly in the “Keys to Academic Success” section in the front of the book and
material on classroom communication skills formerly in a chapter at the end of the book.
The chapter now presents a prominent, unifi ed, and consolidated approach to student
success. Chapters 2 and 3 include new discussions of academic reading and writing, their
distinctive demands, and the importance of mastering them as a requirement for success
in college.
New chapter on writing effective paragraphs. This new Chapter 7, which
follows the chapter on drafting (from which some of its content was drawn), presents
guidance on paragraph structure, topic sentences, supporting details, and transitional
words and phrases. A student essay-in-progress illustrates the skills taught in this chapter.
New annotations for student essays. Most of the student essays in the book
have been annotated, with color-coded screening added to emphasize the writer’s rhe-
torical strategies (and important features of the writing such as thesis statements, topic
sentences, transitions, and source citations) as well as the distinctive features of the mode
taught in the chapter. In addition, many of the brief examples of student and professional
writing throughout the book are annotated to help students immediately see key points.
Eighteen new readings. Many of the new readings deal with issues close to stu-
dents’ lives. The fourteen new selections by professional writers include a classifi cation of
excuses for turning in college assignments late and a favorable comparison of The Onion
with mainstream media; the four new student essays include a description of working in
a fast-paced restaurant kitchen, an analysis of the lengths Americans go to in their quest
to look good, and an explanation of how to make chili for a crowd. A number of the new
essays demonstrate effective use of sources.
New design. A completely new design using a brighter palette makes the book more
visually engaging and easier to navigate. For example, marginal tabs, rules, and graphic
elements make it easier to locate reading selections and exercises within chapters; and, as
noted earlier, color screens help to highlight annotated elements in student essays.
New e-book. The e-book, available for packaging or separate purchase, offers the com-
plete text of the print book, with state-of-the-art tools and multimedia built in. Students can
highlight and annotate the readings, respond to writing prompts directly in the book, and
bookmark sections to be used for reference. Instructors can add their own materials — models,
notes, assignments, course guidelines — and even reorganize chapters. The e-book also offers
links to new peer-review resources, confi dence-building activities that teach best practices
for peer review; these include Peer Factor, an interactive simulation game, along with models,
exercises, and assignments.
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