Readings that model the full range of writing that students will read and produce in college. From autobiography and reflection to evaluation and argument, 48 readings by professional and student writers demonstrate rhetorical purposes through a variety of topics and styles. An annotated essay in each chapter helps students see features and strategies in context and models the close critical reading they need to learn to do.
Uniquely thorough coverage of the reading-writing connection. Students learn how to use the strategies of Reading for Meaning and Reading Like a Writer to analyze the content and craft of successful writing and then how to apply what they've learned to their own writing. In addition, detailed guidance for students in moving from critical reading to successful writing is found in
- Step-by-step Guides to Reading. At the beginning of each chapter, these Guides walk students through a reading selection, asking them to develop their own meanings for it and to evaluate the writer's rhetorical strategies while introducing them to the basic features of that chapter's genre of writing.
- Step-by-step Guides to Writing. At the end of each chapter, these Guides take students through the process of planning, drafting, and revising an essay for that chapter's genre of writing.
- A Catalog of Critical Reading Strategies. An appendix explains 17 useful strateges for critial reading, from annotating and outlining to looking for patterns of opposition and evaluating the logic of an argument, and applies them to an excerpt of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail" and two related pieces of writing. Explanations of specific strategies are referenced in the apparatus for readings throughout the book.
Extensive coverage of strategies for research and documentation. An appendix covers field, library, and online research and provides guidelines for evaluating sources critically, integrating them with one's own writing, and citing them using the MLA and APA styles.