The writing life annie dillard chapter 1

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Ninth Edition

The St. Martin’s Guide to Writing

Rise B. Axelrod University of California, Riverside

Charles R. Cooper University of California, San Diego

Bedford / St. Martin’s

Boston New York

For Bedford/St. Martin’s

Senior Developmental Editor: Alexis P. Walker Senior Production Editor: Harold Chester Production Supervisor: Jennifer Peterson Marketing Manager: Molly Parke Art Director: Lucy Krikorian Text Design: Jerilyn Bockorick Copy Editor: Denise P. Quirk Photo Research: Naomi Kornhauser Cover Design: Richard DiTomassi Composition: Nesbitt Graphics, Inc. Printing and Binding: RR Donnelley and Sons

President: Joan E. Feinberg Editorial Director: Denise B. Wydra Editor in Chief: Karen S. Henry Director of Development: Erica T. Appel Director of Marketing: Karen R. Soeltz Director of Editing, Design, and Production: Marcia Cohen Assistant Director of Editing, Design, and Production: Elise S. Kaiser Managing Editor: Shuli Traub

Library of Congress Control Number: 2009932161 (with Handbook) 2009932166 (without Handbook)

Copyright © 2010, 2008, 2004, 2001 by Bedford/St. Martin’s All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except as may be expressly permitted by the applicable copyright statutes or in writing by the Publisher.

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: 0-312-53612-7 ISBN-13: 978-0-312-53612-1 (with Handbook) ISBN-10: 0-312-53613-5 ISBN-13: 978-0-312-53613-8 (without Handbook)

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments and copyrights appear at the back of the book on pages A1-A3, which consti- tute an extension of the copyright page.

Advisory Board

We owe an enormous debt to all the rhetoricians and composition specialists whose theory, research, and pedagogy have informed The St. Martin’s Guide to Writing. We would be adding many pages if we were to name everyone to whom we are indebted.

The members of the Advisory Board for the ninth edition, a group of dedicated composition instructors from across the country, have provided us with extensive insights and suggestions for the chapters in Part One and have given us the benefit of their advice on new features. The St. Martin’s Guide to Writing has been greatly enhanced by their contributions.

Samantha Andrus-Henry Grand Rapids Community College

Melissa Batai Triton College

Mary Bishop Holmes Junior College–Ridgeland

Jo Ann Buck Guilford Technical Community College

Kevin Cantwell Macon State College

Anne Dvorak Longview Community College

Leona Fisher Chaffey College

Diana Grahn Longview Community College

Dawn Hubbell-Staeble Bowling Green State University

Amy Morris-Jones Baker College of Muskegon

Gray Scott University of California, Riverside

Susan Sebok South Suburban College

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Preface for Instructors

When we first wrote The St. Martin’s Guide to Writing, we aimed to demystify writing and authorize students as writers. We wanted to help students learn to commit them- selves to writing projects, communicate effectively with chosen readers, and question their own certainties. We also wanted them to understand that knowledge of writing comes both from analyzing writing and from working hard on their own writing. To achieve this aim, we took what we had learned from classical rhetoric and from con- temporary composition theory and did our best to make it accessible to students.

The response from instructors and students was overwhelmingly positive: The first edition of The Guide, published in 1985, immediately became the most widely adopted text of its kind in the nation.

As with every new edition, we began work on this ninth edition with the goal of adapting the best of current composition research and practice to the needs of instructors and students. We listened closely to our Advisory Board and dozens of talented reviewers (students as well as instructors), and we were confirmed in our belief that the essential purpose and approach of The Guide is more relevant than ever: Students need clear guidance and practical strategies to harness their potential as writers — an achievement that will be key to their success in their other college courses, in their jobs, and in the wider world.

At the same time, we realized that we needed to reach out to these students, and help them connect with writing, in new ways.

Every aspect of the academic landscape has changed since we wrote the first edition. The texts we read and write, the tools we use to find them, the options we have for communicating, the habits of mind we rely on, even the students them- selves — all are more varied and complex than in the past, sometimes overwhelm- ingly so. At the same time, students and instructors alike are increasingly burdened with demands on their time, attention, and energy that emanate from outside the classroom.

For all of these reasons, this edition represents a bold reimagining of our origi- nal vision. The chapters containing the Guides to Writing have been reengineered to reflect and build on the actual writing processes of students, and the Guides them- selves are streamlined and more visual. Throughout the book, we attempt to help students focus on what is important, yet offer multiple options for critical reading and writing. The result of this reimagining is what you hold in your hands: a text that we believe to be more flexible, more engaging, and more pedagogically effective than any previous edition.

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An Overview of the Book The Guide offers everything you need for the writing course.

Part One: Writing Activities

Part One presents nine different genres of writing, all reflecting actual writing assign- ments that students may encounter both in and out of college. While the chapters can be taught in any order, we have organized Part One to move from writing based on personal experience and reflection, through writing based on research and obser- vation, to writing about controversial issues and problems.

Each chapter follows the same organizational plan:

Three brief illustrated scenarios providing examples of how the genre is used in college courses, in the community, and in the workplace

A brief introduction to the genre A collaborative activity helping students start working in the genre An orientation to the genre’s basic features and to questions of purpose and audience specific to the genre A set of readings illustrating the genre accompanied by questions and prompts designed to help students explore connections to their culture and experience and to analyze the basic features and writing strategies

A “Beyond the Traditional Essay” section discussing examples of the genre drawn from unexpected contexts — advertising, blogs, museums, even public parks

A Guide to Writing, tailored to the genre, that helps students refine their own writing processes, with activities for invention and research, easy-reference guides for drafting and revision, a Critical Reading Guide for peer review, strat- egies for integrating sources, and more

Editing and proofreading guidelines, based on our nationwide study of errors in first-year college students’ writing, to help students check for one or two sentence-level problems likely to occur in a given genre

A section exploring how writers think about document design, expanding on one of the scenarios presented at the beginning of the chapter

A look at one student writer at work, focusing on one or more aspects of the writing process of a student whose essay is featured in the chapter

Critical thinking activities designed to help students reflect on what they learned and consider the social dimensions of the genre taught in the chapter

Part Two: Critical Thinking Strategies

Part Two consists of two chapters that present practical heuristics for invention and reading. Chapter 11, “A Catalog of Invention Strategies,” covers clustering, looping, dramatizing, and questioning, among other strategies, while Chapter 12, “A Catalog of Reading Strategies,” includes annotating, summarizing, exploring the significance of figurative language, and evaluating the logic of an argument.

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Part Three: Writing Strategies

Part Three looks at a wide range of writers’ strategies: paragraphing and coherence; logic and reasoning; and the familiar methods of presenting information, such as narrating, defining, and classifying.

In the ninth edition of The Guide, a new Chapter 20 provides students with criteria for analyzing visuals and illustrates them with several lengthy sample analyses and one full-length, documented student paper. Part Three concludes with a heavily illustrated chapter on document design, which provides principles to guide students in construct- ing a wide range of documents, along with examples of some of the most common kinds of documents they’ll create in school, at work, and in their everyday lives.

Examples and exercises in Part Three have been drawn from a wide range of contemporary publications as well as reading selections appearing in Part One. The extensive cross-referencing between Parts One and Three allows instructors to teach writing strategies as students work on full essays.

Part Four: Research Strategies

Part Four discusses field as well as library and Internet research and includes thorough, up-to-date guidelines for using and documenting sources, with detailed examples of the 2009 Modern Language Association (MLA) and 2010 American Psychological Association (APA) documentation styles. An annotated sample student research paper models ways students can integrate citations into their own work in accordance with the rules for MLA documentation. The final chapter in Part Four, new to the ninth edition of The Guide, offers detailed guidelines for creating anno- tated bibliographies and literature reviews.

Part Five: Writing for Assessment

Part Five covers essay examinations, showing students how to analyze different kinds of exam questions and offering strategies for writing answers. It also addresses portfolios, helping students select, assemble, and present a representative sample of their writing.

Part Six: Writing and Speaking to Wider Audiences

Part Six includes chapters on oral presentations, collaborative learning, and service learning, offering advice to help students work together on writing projects and to write in and for their communities.

The Handbook

The Handbook offers a complete reference guide to grammar, word choice, punctua- tion, mechanics, common ESL problems, sentence structure, and usage. We have designed the Handbook so that students will find the answers they need quickly, and we have provided student examples from our nationwide study so that students will see errors similar to the ones in their own essays. In addition to the section on ESL problems, boxes throughout the rest of the Handbook offer specific support for ESL students.

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Proven Features

While this edition of The Guide represents a bold reimagining of the way students work, it has retained the three central features that have made it a best-seller since its first edition: the detailed, practical guides to writing in different genres; the sys- tematic integration of reading and writing; and continuing attention to changes in composition pedagogy.

Practical Guides to Writing

Each chapter in Part One offers practical, flexible guides that help students with different aspects of writing, such as invention or revision, as they write. Common- sensical and easy to follow, these writing guides teach students to assess a rhetorical situation, identify the kinds of information they will need, ask probing questions and find answers, and organize writing to achieve a particular purpose for chosen readers.

In the ninth edition, we’ve done even more to make these guides effective and easy to use, by streamlining them, by adding easy reference charts and tables, and by offering students multiple entry points into the composing process.

Systematic Integration of Reading and Writing

Each chapter in Part One introduces a single genre of writing, which students are led to consider both as readers and as writers. Chapters begin with an essay written in the genre by a student writer using The Guide; these essays are annotated with questions designed to encourage students to discover the ways in which the essay exemplifies that genre’s basic features.

Each of three professional readings in the chapter is accompanied by carefully focused apparatus to guide purposeful, productive rereading. First is a response activity, Making Connections, which relates a central theme of the reading to stu- dents’ own lives and cultural knowledge. The section following, Analyzing Writing Strategies, asks students to examine how the writer makes use of the basic features and strategies typical of the genre. Essays that include visuals are followed by an Analyzing Visuals section, which asks students to write about the way(s) in which photos, graphs, and other visual elements enhance the text. Finally, in Considering Topics for Your Own Essay, students approach the most important decision they have to make with a genre-centered assignment: choosing a workable topic that inspires their commitment to weeks of thinking and writing.

Continuing Attention to Changes in Composition

With each new edition, we have responded to new thinking and new issues in the field of composition and turned current theory and research into practical class- room activities — with a minimum of jargon. As a result, in every new edition The Guide incorporated new material that contributed to its continued effectiveness, including more on appropriate methods of argument, research, and working with

PREFACE FOR INSTRUCTORS ix

sources; attention to new technologies for writing and researching; activities that promote group discussion and inquiry and encourage students to reflect on what they have learned; and material on document design, oral presentations, and writ- ing in the community.

Changes in the Ninth Edition

In this edition, we have taken instructors’ advice and revised the text to make it an even more effective teaching tool.

Streamlined and redesigned Part One chapters provide more visual cues for students who learn visually, more “easy-reference” features for students who need help navigating a lengthy text, and more “ways in” to each assignment for students whose writing processes don’t conform to an imaginary norm.

The Basic Features of each chapter’s genre of writing are now introduced at the start of the chapter, to lay the groundwork for students’ understand- ing of the genre and to prepare them for their work with that chapter’s readings.

A new color-coding system calls out the Basic Features in the annotated stu- dent essay, the post-reading apparatus, and throughout the Guide to Writing, helping students see the connections among the chapter’s various parts and more easily grasp what makes a successful example of a given genre.

New “Beyond the Traditional Essay” sections illustrate and discuss ex- amples of that chapter’s genre of writing drawn from advertising, blogs, museums — even public parks.

New easy-reference charts in each Guide to Writing — “Starting Points” and “Troubleshooting Your Draft” — help students self-assess and efficiently find the advice and models they need for overcoming individual writing challenges.

Newly designed Invention activities highlight different paths through the processes of generating and shaping material.

Chapter 5, newly revised as “Finding Common Ground,” now teaches students how to analyze opposing positions and find “common ground” between them — a key step in analyzing and synthesizing sources and in con- structing academic as well as civic arguments.

New material brings the book up-to-date and teaches students what they’ll need to succeed at academic writing.

To help students understand and evaluate the visual data that increas- ingly dominate our culture, we have added a new Chapter 20, “Analyzing Visuals,” which provides clear guidance on how to critically read and write about photos, ads, works of art, and other image-based texts. The chapter also offers a multi-stage model of a student’s analysis of a photo by Gordon Parks, as well as exercises in visual analysis that students can do in class or on their own.

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To help them cope with information overload while doing research, we have added a new Chapter 25, “Annotated Bibliographies and Literature Reviews,” which offers detailed guidance on these important elements of the research process.

To help them make useful connections between their previous writing ex- periences and the writing they will do in college, Chapter 1 now focuses on the literacy narrative, encouraging students to reflect on their own literacy experiences in preparation for the reading and writing challenges they’ll en- counter in the course.

Fifteen new readings, with at least one new reading in every Writing Assignment chapter, introduce compelling topics, multicultural perspectives, and fresh voices, including Trey Ellis on a family member’s battle with AIDS, Saira Shah on finding her roots in Afghanistan, and Amy Goldwasser on what kids learn online — and why it matters.

Additional Resources You Get More Help with The St. Martin’s Guide

The benefits of using The St. Martin’s Guide don’t stop with the print text. Online, in print, and in digital format, you’ll find both free and affordable premium resources to help students get even more out of the book and your course. You’ll also find course management solutions and convenient instructor resources, such as sample syllabi, suggested classroom activities, and even a na- tionwide community of teachers. To learn more about or order any of the prod- ucts below, contact your Bedford/St. Martin’s sales representative, e-mail sales support (sales_support@bfwpub.com), or visit the Web site at bedfordstmartins .com/theguide/catalog.

Student Resources

The St. Martin’s Guide Student Center (bedfordstmartins.com/theguide). Send students to free and open resources, allow them to choose an affordable e-book op- tion, or upgrade to an expanding collection of innovative digital content — all in one place.

Free and open resources for The St. Martin’s Guide provide students with easy-to-access book-specific materials, exercises, and downloadable con- tent, including electronic versions of the Critical Reading Guides, Starting Points and Troubleshooting Your Draft charts; tutorials for the sentence strategies in the Part One chapters; and additional essays on topics of con- temporary debate for use with Chapter 5, “Finding Common Ground.” Additional free resources include Research and Documentation Online by Diana Hacker, with clear advice on how to integrate outside material into a

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paper, how to cite sources correctly, and how to format the paper in MLA, APA, Chicago, or CSE style; and Exercise Central, a database of over 9,000 editing exercises designed to help identify students’ strengths and weak- nesses, recommend personalized study plans, and provide tutorials for com- mon writing problems.

The St. Martin’s Guide e-Book and enhanced Web site let students do more and pay less. This flexible e-book allows users to highlight important sections, insert their own sticky notes, and customize content; the enhanced Web site includes Marriage 101 and Other Student Essays, a collection of 32 essays inspired by The Guide, and a peer-review lesson module and online role- playing game. The St. Martin’s Guide e-Book and access to the enhanced Web site can be packaged free with the print book or purchased separately at the Student Center for less than the price of the print book. An activation code is required.

Re:Writing Plus, now with VideoCentral, gathers all of Bedford/St. Martin’s premium digital content for composition into one online collection. It includes hundreds of model documents and VideoCentral, with over 50 brief videos for the writing classroom. Re:Writing Plus can be purchased separately at the Student Center or packaged with the print book at a significant discount. An activation code is required.

Sticks and Stones and Other Student Essays, Seventh Edition. Available for packaging free with new copies of The Guide, Sticks and Stones is a collection of es- says written by students across the nation using earlier editions of The Guide. Each essay is accompanied by a headnote that spotlights some of the ways the writer uses the genre successfully, invites students to notice other achievements, and supplies context where necessary.

Who Are We? Readings in Identity and Community and Work and Career. Available for packaging free with new copies of The Guide, Who Are We? contains selections that expand on themes foregrounded in The Guide. Full of ideas for class- room discussion and writing, the readings offer students additional perspectives and thought-provoking analysis.

i·series on CD-ROM. Free when packaged with new copies of The St. Martin’s Guide, the i·series includes multimedia tutorials in a flexible CD-ROM format — because there are things you can’t do in a book:

ix visual exercises help students visualize and put into practice key rhetorical and visual concepts.

i·claim visualizing argument offers a new way to see argument — with 6 tutorials, an illustrated glossary, and over 70 multimedia arguments.

i·cite visualizing sources brings research to life through an animated introduc- tion, four tutorials, and hands-on source practice.

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Course Management

CompClass for The St. Martin’s Guide (yourcompclass.com). An easy-to-use online course space designed for composition students and instructors, CompClass for The St. Martin’s Guide comes preloaded with the St. Martin’s Guide e-Book as well as other Bedford/St. Martin’s premium digital content, including VideoCentral. Powerful assignment and assessment tools make it easier to keep track of your stu- dents’ progress. CompClass for The St. Martin’s Guide can be purchased separately at yourcompclass.com or packaged with the print book at a significant discount. An activation code is required.

Content cartridges for WebCT, Angel, and other course management systems. Our content cartridges for course management systems — Blackboard, WebCT, Angel, and Desire2Learn — make it simple for instructors using this online learn- ing architecture to build a course around The Guide. The content is drawn from the Web site and includes activities, models, reference materials, and the Exercise Central gradebook.