Practice Of Writing - 5th edition

Summary: A rhetoric and reader in one. The Practice of Writing provides key instruction and abundant practice in all the forms and processes of writing required for college courses, along with enough readings to make a separate collection unnecessary.

Varied and stimulating reading selections. The 85 selections offer a fascinating range of visual and written texts for students to work with, including essays, short stories, poems, newspaper articles, and interviews, ...show moreas well as paintings, drawings, photos, ads, statistics, and Web sites.

Abundant opportunities for practicing writing. 50 varied practices --brief assignments based on accompanying readings--and 6 longer end-of-section projects help students focus on each form of writing and discover their own ideas through the act of writing. For example, this range of unique assignments includes the following:
Express the feelings held by the subjects of three art works -- the anguished character in Edvard Munch's The Cry, two old work boots in Van Gogh's A Pair of Shoes, and a festive and enigmatic Smiling Figure from 7th century A.D. Mexico.
Analyze the images of women in 10 advertisements that span the years 1913-2000.
Write, test, and revise directions for how to make or do something, using recipes from Craig Claiborne and Marion Cunningham as guidance.
Persuade a potential employer by writing a job letter and resume directed at specific want ads.

A focus on the forms of writing college students need to use. After an introductory section on the writing process, chapters 3-10 cover the forms of writing that students will use in all of their college courses--reflection, expression, narration, description, classification, analysis, direction and persuasion, and argumentation--while Chapter 11, on synthesis, encourages them to apply these forms to larger topics. The text is flexibly designed, allowing instructors to introduce the forms of writing in any order they choose.

Writing assignments that work for a wide range of students. The writing assignments provide enough direction and support so that less experienced students have a sense of accomplishment, and enough room for creativity so that better prepared students can push their limits. New to This Edition :

• New topics, fresh voices. Half of the readings and practices are new, with more on popular culture and technology, including selections from writers such as Julia Child and Craig Claiborne, Toni Cade Bambara, Paul Auster, Naguib Mahfouz, Patricia Nelson Limerick, Brent Stapes, Garry Wills, Sherry Turkle, and Sharon Olds.
• Enhanced use of visual images. Used both as stand-alone selections and as illustrations within texts, the art and photos in The Practice of Writing help students interpret and write about the visual nature of our culture. New images include contemporary photographs, advertisements, and computer screen-shots.
• Increased coverage of the writing process. A new chapter on "Writing as a Process" (Ch. 2) gives students more instruction in experimenting, drafting, supporting a thesis, and revising. New part introductions give students more detailed guidance in using each writing form.
• Longer readings and assignments. New writing projects at the end of Parts 2, 3, and 4 offer longer readings and writing sequences that give students opportunities for doing additional research and that lend themselves to a portfolio approach to teaching writing.
• New focus on technology. Substantial coverage of new technologies, woven throughout the text, includes a new section called "Virtual Relationships" in Part 5.
• Expanded treatment of synthesis. The chapter on synthesis -- which uses various forms of writing to make sense of a complex topic -- has been expanded into a new Part 5. This part contains -- in addition to the new project, "Virtual Relationships" -- significantly revised projects, "Reading Photographs" and "American Frontier and American Culture."

Edition/Copyright: 5TH 01
Cover: Paperback
Publisher: St. Martins Press, Inc.
Year Published: 2001

View Author Bio

Scholes, Robert : Brown University

Robert Scholes is Andrew Mellon Professor of the Humanities and Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Brown University. His publications include Textual Power: Theory and the Teaching of Literature (1985), Protocols of Reading (1991), and The Rise and Fall of English: Reconstructing English As a Discipline (1998).

Comley, Nancy R. : City University of New York

Nancy R. Comley is Professor of English at Queens College, CUNY, where she is associate chair of the English department. She is coauthor of Fields of Reading: Motives for Writing, Sixth Edition (Bedford/St. Martin's, 2000) and Textbook: An Introduction to Literary Language, Second Edition (Bedford/St. Martin's, 1995).

Peritz, Janice : City University of New York

Related materials for Practice Of Writing »