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Models for Writers Short Essays for Composition THIRTEENTH EDITION
Alfred Rosa Paul Eschholz University of Vermont
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Acknowledgments
Text acknowledgments and copyrights appear at the back of the book on pages 661–64, which constitute an extension of the copyright
page. Art acknowledgments and copyrights appear on the same page as the art selections they cover.
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Preface
Models for Writers, now in its thirteenth edition, continues to offer students and instructors brief, accessible, high-interest models of rhetorical elements, principles, and patterns. As important as it is for students to read while they are learning to write college-level essays, Models for Writers offers more than a collection of essays. Through the abundant study materials that accompany each selection, students master the writing skills they will need for all their college classes. Writing activities and assignments give students the chance to stitch together the various rhetorical elements into coherent, forceful essays of their own. This approach, which has helped several million students become better writers, remains at the heart of the book.
In this edition, we continue to emphasize the classic features of Models for Writers that have won praise from teachers and students alike. In addition, we have strengthened the book by introducing new selections and new perspectives, and we have emphasized the student voices that resound throughout the book. For the first time, this edition is also available with LaunchPad, which has an interactive e-book, reading quizzes, extra practice with reading and writing through LearningCurve adaptive quizzing, and more.
Favorite Features of Models for Writers
Brief, lively readings that provide outstanding models. Most of the seventy professional selections and all seven of the sample student essays in Models for Writers are comparable in length (two to four pages) to the essays students will write themselves, and each clearly illustrates a basic rhetorical element, principle, or pattern. Just as important, the essays deal with subjects that we know from our own teaching experience will spark the interest of most college students. In addition, the range of voices, cultural perspectives, and styles represented in the essays will resonate with today’s students. They will both enjoy and benefit from reading and writing about selections by many well-known authors, including Judith Ortiz Cofer, Stephen King, Anne Lamott, Amy Tan, Maya Angelou, David Sedaris, Langston Hughes, Bharati Mukherjee, Mary Sherry, and Martin Luther King Jr.
Introductory chapters on reading and writing. Throughout the chapters in Part One, students review the writing process from fresh angles and learn how to use the essays they read to improve their own writing. Chapter 1, The Writing Process, details the steps in the writing process and illustrates them with a student essay in progress. A dedicated section
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on thesis statements, Develop Your Thesis, includes a clear five-step process to help students through the challenge of arriving at an effective thesis statement from a broad topic. Chapter 2, From Reading to Writing, shows students how to use the apparatus in the text, provides them with guidelines for critical reading, and demonstrates with three student essays (narrative, responsive, and argumentative) how they can generate their own writing from reading.
An easy-to-follow rhetorical organization. Each of the twenty-one rhetorically based chapters in Models for Writers is devoted to a particular element or pattern important to college writing. Chapters 3 through 10 focus on the concepts of thesis, unity, organization, beginnings and endings, paragraphs, transitions, effective sentences, and writing with sources. Chapter 11 illustrates the importance of controlling diction and tone, and Chapter 12, the uses of figurative language. Chapters 13 through 21 explore the types of writing most often required of college students: illustration, narration, description, process analysis, definition, division and classification, comparison and contrast, cause and effect, and argument. Chapter 22, Combining Models, shows students how these writing strategies can be combined to achieve a writer’s purpose.
Flexible arrangement. Each chapter is self-contained so that instructors can easily follow their own teaching sequences, omitting or emphasizing certain chapters according to the needs of their students or the requirements of the course.
Abundant study materials. To help students use the readings to improve their writing, every essay is accompanied by ample study materials.
Reflecting on What You Know activities precede each reading and prompt students to explore their own ideas and experiences regarding the issues presented in the reading.
Thinking Critically about This Reading questions follow each essay and encourage students to consider the writer’s assumptions, make connections not readily apparent, or explore the broader implications of the selection.
Questions for Study and Discussion focus on the selection’s content, the author’s purpose, and the particular strategy the author used to achieve that purpose. To remind students that good writing is never one-dimensional, at least one question in each series focuses on a writing concern other than the one highlighted in the chapter.
Classroom Activities provide brief exercises that enable students to work (often in groups) on rhetorical elements, techniques, or patterns. These activities range from developing thesis statements to using strong action verbs and building argumentative evidence, and they
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encourage students to apply concepts modeled in the readings to their own writing. Several activities throughout the book also provide students with examples of career-related writing to demonstrate that critical reading, writing, and thinking skills are crucial beyond the college classroom. Several new activities invite students to employ different learning strategies and understand a concept through movement, visuals, or other hands-on and collaborative practice.
Suggested Writing Assignments provide at least two writing assignments for each essay, encouraging students to use the reading selection as a direct model, asking them to respond to the content of the reading, or expanding the selection topic to include their personal experience or outside research.
Concise and interesting chapter introductions. Writing instructors who use Models for Writers continue to be generous in their praise for the brief, clear, practical, and student- friendly chapter introductions that explain the various elements and patterns. In each introduction, students will find illuminating examples — many written by students — of the feature or principle under discussion.
Practical instruction on working with sources. One of the biggest challenges student writers face is incorporating supporting evidence from other writers into their essays. In Chapter 1, The Writing Process, students find clear advice on developing strong thesis statements and marshaling evidence and support. Chapter 10 models strategies for taking effective notes from sources; using signal phrases to integrate quotations, summaries, and paraphrases smoothly; synthesizing sources; and avoiding plagiarism. Further reviewing the steps and skills involved in research and synthesis, Chapter 23, A Brief Guide to Writing a Research Paper, provides one full-length MLA-style model student research paper and the cover sheet, first page, and list of references for one APA-style model student research paper (the entire paper is offered online in LaunchPad). Thus, students become more confident in joining academic conversations and in writing the kinds of essays that they will be called on to write in their college courses.
Targeted instruction on sentence grammar. Chapter 24, Editing for Grammar, Punctuation, and Sentence Style, addresses editing concerns that instructors across the country have identified as the most problematic for their students, such as run-on sentences, verb tense shifts, comma splices, sentence fragments, and dangling and misplaced modifiers. Brief explanations and hand-edited examples show students how to find and correct these common errors in their own writing. Also available in this new
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edition are a host of online tutorials and self-paced, adaptive activities for further practice with grammatical and mechanical concepts.
An alternate table of contents showing thematic clusters. The alternate table of contents (pp. xxxi–xxxvi) groups readings into twenty-four clusters, each with three to eight essays sharing a common theme. Students and instructors attracted to the theme of one essay in Models for Writers can consult this alternate table of contents to find other essays in the book that address the same theme.
Glossary of Useful Terms. Cross-referenced in many of the questions and writing assignments throughout the book, this list of key terms defines rhetorical and literary terms that student writers need to know. Terms that are explained in the Glossary (pp. 647–60) are shown in boldface the first time they appear in a chapter.
New to the Thirteenth Edition of Models for Writers
Engaging, informative, and diverse new readings. Twenty-three of the book’s seventy readings are new to this edition of Models for Writers — ideal models by both new and established writers. We selected these essays for their brevity and clarity, for their effectiveness as models, and for their potential to develop critical thinking and writing on interesting and relevant topics. Among the new readings are Jonathan Safran Foer’s “Against Meat,” Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s “We Should All Be Feminists,” Jonah Berger’s “The Power of Conformity,” Misty Copeland’s “Life in Motion,” and Marie Kondo’s “Designate a Place for Each Thing.”
More attention to student writing. A clearer design emphasizes the student writing in each chapter introduction, showing students the power of their words to serve as models for each chapter theme. A new student essay by Libby Marlowe in the Chapter 21 argument cluster on crime demonstrates how to enter a conversation and use texts from Models for Writers to write an effective argument.
Compelling new examples of argument. A timely new argument cluster in Chapter 21, Argument, features a new group of readings on “Conflict: Using Language to Seek Resolution” by diverse voices: an expert on conflict resolution, a political journalist, and a Cincinnati police officer.
Updated MLA coverage. A section in Chapter 23, A Brief Guide to Writing a Research Paper, aligns formatting and citation examples with the 2016 Modern Language
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Association guidelines.
LaunchPad for Models for Writers. LaunchPad, Macmillan’s customizable online course space, includes auto-scored reading comprehension quizzes and an interactive e-Book version of the text. A digital tutorial in Chapter 1 transforms the writing process into an interactive walk-through, and annotation activities in Chapter 2 allow students to practice close reading in the digital environment. The LaunchPad also offers an array of new materials, including LearningCurve adaptive quizzing, multimedia tutorials, and other resources that you can adapt, assign, and mix with your own.
Acknowledgments
In response to the many thoughtful reviews from instructors who use this book, we have maintained the solid foundation of the previous edition of Models for Writers while adding fresh readings and writing topics to stimulate today’s student writers.
We are indebted to many people for their advice as we prepared this thirteenth edition. We are especially grateful to Michael Alvarez, Southern Maine Community College; Shannon G. Blair, Central Piedmont Community College; Elizabeth Catanese, Community College of Philadelphia; Tamera Davis, Northern Oklahoma College: Stillwater; Stacey Frazier, Northern Oklahoma College; Cynthia C. Galvan, Milwaukee Area Technical College; Maria Gonzalez, Miami Dade College; Jacqueline Gray, St. Charles Community College; Nile Hartline, DMACC; Liz Mathews, University of the Incarnate Word; Jean E. Mittelstaedt, Chemeketa Community College; Carrie Myers, Lehigh Carbon Community College; Michelle Patton, Fresno City College; Jose Reyes, El Paso Community College; Donald Stinson, Northern Oklahoma College; Stephen Turner, Milwaukee Area Technical College; Magdeleine Vandal, Carroll Community College; Robert Vettese, Southern Maine Community College; Vita Watkins, Glendale Community College; and Katherine Woodbury, Southern Maine Community College.
It has been our good fortune to have the editorial guidance and good cheer of Leah Rang, our developmental editor on this book, and Stephanie Cohen, assistant editor. We have also benefited from the great contributions to this edition by Andrew J. Hoffman, Elizabeth Catanese, and Jonathan Douglas, as well as the careful eye of Pamela Lawson, our content project manager, and the rest of the excellent team at Bedford/St. Martin’s — Edwin Hill, Leasa Burton, John Sullivan, and Joy Fisher Williams — as we planned, developed, and wrote this new edition. Our special thanks go to the late Tom Broadbent — our mentor and
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original editor at St. Martin’s Press — who helped us breathe life and soul into Models for Writers in its earliest editions. The lessons that he shared with us during our fifteen-year partnership have stayed with us throughout our careers.
Thanks also to Sarah Federman, who authored the new material for the Instructor’s Manual. Our greatest debt is, as always, to our students — especially James Duffy, Trena Isley, Jake Jamieson, Zoe Ockenga, and Jeffrey Olesky, whose papers appear in this text — for all they have taught us over the years. Finally, we thank each other, partners in this writing and teaching venture for over four decades.
Alfred Rosa Paul Eschholz
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LaunchPad for Models for Writers: Where Students Learn
LaunchPad provides engaging content and new ways to get the most out of your book. Get an interactive e-Book combined with assessment tools in a fully customizable course space; then assign and mix our resources with yours.
A digital tutorial in Chapter 1 transforms the writing process into an interactive walk- through, and annotation activities in Chapter 2 allow students to practice close reading in the digital environment.
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Reading comprehension quizzes accompany every professional reading selection in this edition.
Diagnostics provide opportunities to assess areas for improvement and assign additional exercises based on students’ needs. Visual reports show performance by topic, class, and student as well as improvement over time.
Pre-built units — including readings, videos, quizzes, and more — are easy to adapt and assign by adding your own materials and mixing them with our high-quality multimedia content and ready-made assessment options, such as LearningCurve adaptive quizzing and Exercise Central.
Use LaunchPad on its own or integrate it with your school’s learning management system so that your class is always on the same page.
LaunchPad for Models for Writers can be purchased on its own or packaged with the print book at a significant discount. An activation code is required. To order LaunchPad for Models for Writers with the print book, use ISBN 978-1-319-14476-0. For more information, go to launchpadworks.com
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Select Value Packages
Add value to your text by packaging one of the following resources with Models for Writers.
LaunchPad Solo for Readers and Writers allows students to work on what they need help with the most. At home or in class, students learn at their own pace, with instruction tailored to each student’s unique needs. LaunchPad Solo for Readers and Writers features:
Pre-built units that support a learning arc.Each easy-to-assign unit is comprised of a pre-
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test check, multimedia instruction and assessment, and a post-test that assesses what students have learned about critical reading, the writing process, using sources, grammar, style, and mechanics. Dedicated units also offer help for multilingual writers.
Diagnostics that help establish a baseline for instruction. Assign diagnostics to identify areas of strength and for improvement and to help students plan a course of study. Use visual reports to track performance by topic, class, and student as well as improvement over time.
A video introduction to many topics. Introductions offer an overview of the unit’s topic, and many include a brief, accessible video to illustrate the concepts at hand.
Twenty-five reading selections with comprehension quizzes. Assign a range of classic and contemporary essays each of which includes a label indicating Lexile level to help you scaffold instruction in critical reading.
Adaptive quizzing for targeted learning. Most units include LearningCurve, game-like adaptive quizzing that focuses on the areas in which each student needs the most help.
Additional reading comprehension quizzes. Models for Writers includes multiple-choice quizzes, which help you quickly gauge your students’ understanding of the assigned reading. These are available in LaunchPad Solo for Readers and Writers.
LaunchPad Solo for Readers and Writers can be packaged with Models for Writers at a significant discount. For more information, contact your sales representative or visit macmillanlearning.com/readwrite.
Writer’s Help 2.0 is a powerful online writing resource that helps students find answers, whether they are searching for writing advice on their own or as part of an assignment.
Smart search. Built on research with more than 1,600 student writers, the smart search in Writer’s Help provides reliable results even when students use novice terms, such as flow and unstuck.
Trusted content from our best-selling handbooks. Choose Writer’s Help 2.0, Hacker Version, or Writer’s Help 2.0, Lunsford Version, and ensure that students have clear advice and examples for all of their writing questions.
Diagnostics that help establish a baseline for instruction. Assign diagnostics to identify areas of strength and areas for improvement and to help students plan a course of study. Use visual reports to track performance by topic, class, and student as well as improvement
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over time.
Adaptive exercises that engage students. Writer’s Help 2.0 includes LearningCurve, game- like online quizzing that adapts to what students already know and helps them focus on what they need to learn.
Reading comprehension quizzes. Models for Writers includes multiple-choice quizzes, which help you quickly gauge your students’ understanding of the assigned reading. These are available in Writer’s Help 2.0.
Writer’s Help 2.0 can be packaged with Models for Writers at a significant discount. For more information, contact your sales representative or visit macmillanlearning.com/writershelp2.
Instructor Resources
You have a lot to do in your course. We want to make it easy for you to find the support you need — and to get it to you quickly.
Instructor’s Manual for Models for Writers is available as a PDF that can be downloaded from macmillanlearning.com. Visit the instructor resources tab for Models for Writers. In addition to suggested answers for each selection’s critical reading and study questions, the instructor’s manual includes essay analysis and discussion, as well as tips to help students think critically about what they have read. Also included in the manual are two sample course plans for first-year composition courses — one fifteen weeks, one ten weeks — and a complete sample syllabus for a fifteen-week developmental English course.
Council of Writing Program Administrators (WPA) Outcomes Statement for First-Year Composition
In 2014 the Council of Writing Program Administrators updated its desired outcomes for first-year composition courses. The following chart provides detailed information on how Models for Writers helps students build proficiency and achieve the learning outcomes that writing programs across the country use to assess their students’ work: rhetorical knowledge; critical thinking, reading, and writing; writing processes; and knowledge of conventions.
WPA Outcomes | Relevant Features of Models for Writers,13e
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Rhetorical Knowledge
Learn and use key rhetorical concepts through analyzing and composing a variety of texts
The organization of Models for Writers supports students’ understanding of rhetorical strategy. Part Two (Chs. 3–10) focuses on elements of the essay; Part Three (Chs. 11–12) highlights the language and style of the essay; Part Four (Chs. 13–22) explores the different writing strategies most often required of college students. Concise and practical chapter introductions explain how the elements and strategies suit authors’ purposes.
Chapter 1 shows students how to identify their audience (p. 20) and introduces them to purpose through an understanding of rhetorical methods of development (pp. 20–22).
In Chapter 2, students learn how to understand context through headnotes and how to read rhetorically and read as a writer (p. 53), analyzing and evaluating texts according to their rhetorical purpose.
Dedicated boxes such as Audience Questions (p. 20) and Questions to Ask Yourself as You Read (p. 45) provide additional support for analyzing and composing texts.
Questions for Study and Discussion following each reading focus on the author’s purpose and the particular strategy used to achieve that purpose.
Suggested Writing Assignments following each reading prompt students to write using the rhetorical element or strategy focused on in that chapter.
A dedicated section in Chapter 21, Argument, asks students to Consider Ethos, Logos, and Pathos (p. 497).
Gain experience reading and composing in several genres to
The seventy readings in the book span a variety of topics, disciplines, and genres. Part Three is organized by rhetorical pattern, with three reading options per chapter to give students experience and practice.
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understand how genre conventions shape and are shaped by readers’ and writers’ practices and purposes
Each reading selection features a robust apparatus that gives students practice analyzing and writing for a variety of purposes and in a range of styles. In addition to Questions for Study and Discussion and Suggested Writing Assignments (see above), Classroom Activities provide opportunities for applied learning with exercises that enable students to work (often in groups) on rhetorical elements, techniques, or patterns. Several activities connect rhetorical strategies to real-world genres such as application letters and memos.
Develop facility in responding to a variety of situations and contexts calling for purposeful shifts in voice, tone, level of formality, design, medium, and/or structure
Chapter introductions explain how each rhetorical element and strategy is used to achieve an author’s purpose.
Part Two (Chs. 3–10) emphasizes the Elements of the Essay, with dedicated chapters and model professional readings focused on organized writing: Thesis, Unity, Organization, Beginnings and Endings, Paragraphs, Transitions, Effective Sentences, and Writing with Sources.
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.
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.
Knowledge of Conventions
Develop knowledge of linguistic structures, including grammar, punctuation, and
A dedicated Part Three focuses particularly on the Language of the Essay, drawing students’ attention to the rhetorical effectiveness of diction, tone, and figurative language.
Chapters in Part Two, The Elements of the Essay, emphasize the importance of linguistic structure at various levels of the essay, including Transitions (Ch. 8) and Effective Sentences (Ch. 9).
Chapter 24, Editing for Grammar, Punctuation, and Sentence
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spelling, through practice in composing and
revising
Style, covers common grammar and mechanical errors and presents clear examples of corrections to help students write with minimal errors. Coverage includes run-ons and comma splices, sentence fragments, subject-verb agreement, pronoun-antecedent agreement, verb tense shifts, misplaced and dangling modifiers, faulty parallelism, weak nouns and verbs, and academic diction and
tone.
In the LaunchPad, LearningCurve adaptive quizzing on common grammar, mechanics, and writing topics lead students to online self-guided practice that lets them learn at their own pace.
Understand why genre conventions for structure, paragraphing, tone, and mechanics vary
Chapter introductions for each rhetorical element in Parts Two and Three and for each rhetorical pattern in Part Four explain how each strategy serves a writer’s purpose.
Dedicated chapters on Paragraphs (Ch. 7), Tone (Ch. 11), and Mechanics (Ch. 24) further emphasize rhetorical importance and variation.
Gain experience negotiating variations in genre conventions
In addition to the support in chapter introductions mentioned above, the Classroom Activities and Suggested Writing Assignments following each reading selection encourage students to apply the rhetorical strategies to real-world genres and situations and to use them in their writing.
Learn common formats and/or design features for different kinds of texts
Model student essays in the book are presented in MLA formatting. Chapter 23 features fully formatted examples of MLA- and APA- style student research papers, with annotations highlighting the genre design conventions.
Explore the concepts of intellectual property (such as fair use and
Chapter 10, Writing with Sources, explains why outside sources are rhetorically useful and helps writers articulate positions in the conversation and extend their own ideas, and how doing so requires thoughtful documentation when integrating quotation, paraphrase, or summary.
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copyright) that motivate documentation
conventions
A dedicated section, Avoid Plagiarism (p. 238), further defines and explores these concepts.
Practice applying citation conventions systematically in their own work
Chapter 23, A Brief Guide to Writing a Research Paper, offers detailed guidance on taking notes to avoid plagiarism as well as model citations in both MLA and APA styles.
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Contents
Preface Thematic Clusters Introduction for Students
part one On Reading and Writing Well
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1 The Writing Process Prewriting
Understand Your Assignment Choose a Subject Area and Focus on a Topic Get Ideas and Collect Information Understand What a Thesis Is Develop Your Thesis Know Your Audience Determine Your Method of Development Map Your Organization
Writing the First Draft Create a Title Focus on Beginnings and Endings
Revising Editing Proofreading Writing an Expository Essay: A Student Essay in Progress Jeffrey Olesky, Golf: A Character Builder (student essay)
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2 From Reading to Writing Reading Critically
Step 1: Prepare Yourself to Read the Selection Abraham Lincoln, The Gettysburg Address
Step 2: Read the Selection Step 3: Reread the Selection Step 4: Annotate the Text with Marginal Notes Step 5: Analyze and Evaluate the Text with Questions An Example: Annotating Abraham Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address”