Part Three (Chs. 11–12) emphasizes the Language of the Essay, with chapters dedicated to Diction/Tone and Figurative Language.
While most essays and instruction highlight the writer’s chosen organization, students are introduced to the importance of structure in the section Map Your Organization in Chapter 1 (p. 23), and Chapter 5, Organization, focuses especially on essay structure.
Understand and use a variety of technologies to address a range of audiences
Several of the Classroom Activities encourage students to engage other learning styles and use other technologies, from drawing on paper to creating storyboards.
The book’s LaunchPad invites students to interact with the readings in a digital environment with highlighting and annotation tools. Online tutorials on important writing concepts help students learn through interaction. In addition, adaptive, game-like LearningCurve quizzing allows students to practice
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reading and writing skills.
Match the capacities of different environments (e.g., print and electronic) to varying rhetorical situations
Research coverage in Chapter 10 and Chapter 23 gives instructions specific to research and project planning, from taking notes to finding and evaluating sources, in both print and online spaces.
See also the previous WPA Outcomes section, “Understand and use a variety of technologies to address a range of audiences.”
Critical Thinking, Reading, and Composing
Use composing and reading for inquiry, learning, critical thinking, and communicating in various rhetorical contexts
Chapter 1, The Writing Process, presents writing as inquiry, as a tool for gathering ideas and exploring topics.
Chapter 2, From Reading to Writing, gives students tools to read critically and learn to read as a writer (p. 53); students learn to understand the rhetorical context and the writer’s choices in order to apply those tools to their own writing.
Thinking Critically about This Reading, Questions for Study and Discussion, and Suggested Writing Assignments encourage students to write to learn through small-stakes journal or homework writing or full essays appropriate to the rhetorical strategy of the chapter.
Read a diverse range of texts, attending especially to relationships between assertion and evidence, to patterns of
A lively collection of seventy brief classic and contemporary essays provide outstanding models for students. Each selection has been carefully chosen to engage students and to clearly illustrate
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organization, to the interplay between verbal and nonverbal elements, and to how these features function for different
audiences and situations
a basic rhetorical element or pattern at work in the chapter.
Thematic clusters (pp. xxxi–xxxvi) offer flexibility, grouping readings by topic so students can use the selection in the book to collect and analyze information on their subject of choice. Themes include The American Dream, The Immigrant Experience, The Natural World, Social Issues and Activism, and Technology, among others.
A new Chapter 22, Combining Models, explains more varied organizational writing strategies, showing how to combine patterns for effective writing.
Several readings include images to encourage students to analyze the relationship between visual and verbal elements (see Wei-Haas, Shaughnessy, Krulwich, Morris).
Chapter 21, Argument, provides thorough coverage of making and supporting claims.
Locate and evaluate (for credibility, sufficiency, accuracy, timeliness, bias, and so on) primary and secondary research materials, including journal articles and essays, books, scholarly and professionally established and maintained databases or archives, and informal electronic networks and Internet sources
Models for Writers offers practical instruction on working with sources to guide students in one of their biggest writing challenges: incorporating supporting evidence from other writers into their essays.