Chapter 1, The Writing Process, offers students clear advice and steps for developing strong thesis statements and marshaling evidence and support.
Chapter 10, Writing with Sources, and Chapter 23, A Brief Guide to Writing a Research Paper, review the steps and skills involved in research and synthesis, with dedicated sections on Finding and Using Sources in print and online (p. 597),
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Evaluating Your Print and Online Sources (p. 599), and Analyzing Your Sources for Position and Bias (p. 601). The chapter includes model MLA- and APA-style research papers and models
for citations.
Helpful charts in Chapter 23 make useful reference tools; see, for example, Refining Keyword Searches on the Web (p. 598) and Strategies for Evaluating Print and Online Sources (p. 599).
Use strategies — such as interpretation, synthesis, response, critique, and design/redesign — to compose texts that integrate the writer’s ideas with those from appropriate sources
The questions and prompts that accompany each reading ask students to interpret, respond, and critique the reading and the writer’s choices, engaging in academic conversation.
Chapter 10, Writing with Sources, models strategies for taking effective notes from sources; using signal phrases to integrate quotations, summaries, and paraphrases smoothly; synthesizing sources; and avoiding plagiarism.
The Checklist for Analyzing a Writer’s Position and Bias (p. 602) in Chapter 23 urges students to analyze writers’ purposes and assumptions as they incorporate outside sources into their own writing.
A new student essay, “Shame: The Ultimate Clickbait,” in the Chapter 21 argument cluster, Crime: Finding an Effective Punishment, demonstrates how to enter a conversation, synthesize selections from Models for Writers, and organize an effective written argument.
See also the previous WPA Outcomes section, “Locate and evaluate….”
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Processes
Develop a writing project through multiple drafts
Chapter 1, The Writing Process, leads students from Prewriting through Drafting, Revising, Editing, and Proofreading to present a final draft. See, especially, Choose a Subject Area and Focus on a Topic (p. 11), Get Ideas and Collect Information (p. 12), and the step-by-step process in Develop Your Thesis (p. 14).
Chapter 24, Editing for Grammar, Punctuation, and Sentence Style, provides sound advice, examples, and solutions for the editing problems that trouble students most.
Develop flexible strategies for reading, drafting, reviewing, collaborating, revising, rewriting, rereading, and editing
In Chapter 1, a sample student essay by Jeffrey Olesky (pp. 34–38) illustrates one student’s choices during the process for each stage and is also available as an interactive tutorial activity in LaunchPad.
Most Classroom Activities that accompany each reading encourage students to work collaboratively to understand and apply rhetorical concepts and strategies in writing or other exploratory methods.
Use composing processes and tools as a means to discover and reconsider ideas
As part of the instruction on the writing process, Chapter 1 includes dedicated sections to help students brainstorm and prewrite with notes, clustering, and outlining: Choose a Subject Area and Focus on a Topic (p. 11) and Get Ideas and Collect Information (p. 12).
Experience the collaborative and social aspects of writing processes
The Reflecting on What You Know and Thinking Critically about the Reading prompts that immediately precede and follow each reading selection, respectively, can be used for group discussion and writing.
The Classroom Activities that accompany each reading frequently ask students to share their writing and ideas with their classmates and discuss them, learning from each other.
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Learn to give and to act on productive feedback to works in progress
Dedicated boxes in Chapter 1, such as Questions for Revising (p. 27), guide students through the writing process and assist in peer revision workshops.
Adapt composing processes for a variety of technologies and modalities
The book assumes that most students compose in digital spaces, and instructions in a number of Suggested Writing Assignments and other prompts reflect and encourage this use of the digital space.
Instructions for research and collecting notes on sources in Chapter 10 and Chapter 23 assume that students are working mostly online and with technology, so the advice offers strategies for collecting and managing data in digital formats.
The LaunchPad version of Models for Writers offers a digital course space and an interactive e-book as well as integrated digital tutorials to teach core concepts of writing.
Reflect on the development of composing practices and how those practices influence their work
Reflecting on What You Know prompts before each reading ask students to discover and apply their prior knowledge to the reading selection.