Our principal aim is to demystify writing and authorize students
as writers. To this end, we seek to teach students how to use
the composing process as a means of seeing what they know as well
as how they know it. We want students to learn to use writing
to think critically and communicate effectively with others. Finally,
we hope to inspire students with the desire to question their
own certainties and provide them with the strategies for doing
so.
You may choose among these chapters and teach them in any sequence
you wish, though they are sequenced here to move students from
writing based on personal experience and observation to writing
calling for the analysis and synthesis of ideas and information
derived from a variety of sources.
Each chapter follows the same organizational plan.
A trio of critical thinking activities designed
to help students to reflect on and consolidate what they learned
about writing and reading and to consider the social dimensions
of the genre of writing taught in that chapter
Part II, Critical Thinking Strategies, collects in two
separate chapters practical heuristics for invention and reading.
The catalog of invention strategies includes clustering, looping,
dramatizing, and questioning, while the catalog of reading strategies
includes annotating, summarizing, exploring the significance of
figurative language, and evaluating the logic of an argument.
Part III, Writing Strategies, looks at a wide range of
essential writers' strategies: paragraphing and coherence,
logic and reasoning, and the familiar modes of presenting information,
such as narrating, defining, and classifying. Examples and exercises
are almost all taken from contemporary nonfiction, and many exercises
deal with reading selections appearing in Part I. Because of the
extensive cross-referencing between Parts I and III, instructors
will find it easier to teach writing strategies in the context
of purpose and audience.
Part IV, Research Strategies, discusses field as well as
library and Internet research and includes thorough guidelines
for using and documenting sources, with detailed examples of the
Modern Language Association (MLA) and American Psychological Association
(APA) documentation styles. The part concludes with a sample student
research paper.
Part V, Writing for Assessment, 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 to assemble a representative sample
of their writing.
The Handbook, which has been thoroughly revised for this
edition, is a complete reference guide covering grammar, word
choice, punctuation, mechanics, common ESL problems, sentence
structure, and usage. We have designed the Handbook so that students
will find the answers that they need quickly, and we have provided
student examples throughout so that students will see errors similar
to the ones in their own essays.
PROVEN FEATURES
Several proven features have made The St. Martin's Guide
to Writing such an effective textbook: the practical guides
to writing, the systematic integration of reading and writing,
activities to promote group discussion and inquiry, and activities
that encourage students to reflect on what they have learned.
Practical Guides to Writing. We do not merely
talk about the composing process; rather, we offer practical,
flexible guides that escort students through the entire process,
from invention through revision and self-evaluation. Thus, this
book is more than just a rhetoric that students will refer to
occasionally. It is a guidebook that will help them to write.
Commonsensical 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 their writing to achieve their purpose.
Systematic Integration of Reading and Writing. Because
we see a close relationship between the ability to read critically
and the ability to write intelligently, The St. Martin's
Guide combines reading instruction with writing instruction.
Each chapter in Part I introduces one kind of discourse, which
students are led to consider both as readers and as writers. Readings
are followed by questions that make students aware of how they
as readers respond and at the same time help them to understand
the decisions that writers make. Students are then challenged
to apply these insights to their own writing as they imagine their
prospective readers, set goals, and write and revise their drafts.
Activities to Promote Group Discussion and Inquiry. At
the start of each of the writing chapters is a collaborative activity
that invites students to try out some of the thinking and planning
they will be doing for the kind of writing covered in that chapter.
Then, following each reading comes Connecting to Culture and Experience,
designed to provoke thoughtful responses about the social and
political dimensions of the reading. In the Guide to Writing is
another collaborative activity that gets students to discuss their
work in progress with one another and a Critical Reading Guide,
which guides students as they read and comment on each other's
drafts. Finally, a discussion activity invites students to explore
the social dimensions of the genre they have been learning to
write. All of these materials include questions and prompts to
guide students to work productively together.
Thinking Critically about What You Have Learned. Each
chapter in Part I concludes with three metacognitive activities
to help students to become aware of what they have learned about
the process of writing, about the influence of reading on writing,
and about the social and political dimensions of the genres they
have learned to write. These activities are based on research
showing that reflecting on what they have learned deepens students'
understanding and improves their recall.
CHANGES IN THE FIFTH EDITION
We have tried in this new edition to continue our tradition of
turning current theory and research into practical classroom activitiesówith
a minimum of jargon. We have also incorporated guidelines for
using the new technologies that are increasingly available to
students. Chief among these new features are encouragement to
write essays on identity and community and on work and career,
a completely revised Handbook, coverage of the new opportunities
for research available on the Internet, updated and improved MLA
and APA guidelines, and a new, more colorful design.
New Topic Choices. The Guide to Writing in each chapter
in Part I now includes topic suggestions in two broad areas: "identity
and community" and "work and career." These
two themes are also reflected in a number of the readings in Part
I. In addition, Who Are We? Readings in Identity and Community
and Work and Career provides additional readings for classroom
discussion. The two themes are useful for instructors who prefer
a thematic approach, and the topic suggestions also broaden the
possibilities for all students.
Activities Connecting Themes in the Readings to Students'
Culture and Experience. Immediately following each reading,
an activity, Connecting to Culture and Experience, relates students'
cultural knowledge and personal experience to a central theme
of that reading. The activity identifies and usually elaborates
on the theme and contextualizes it further to ensure that students
see its cultural implications and importance in their own lives.
Students are then invited to consider the theme in small group
discussion. The goals for the discussion are clearly defined so
that students can maintain a shared focus while at the same time
exploring freely the various meanings of the theme for their individual
lives. Many themes relate to the broad topic areas of "identity
and community" and "work and career."
Activities for Analyzing Writing Strategies in Every Reading.
In this edition, we have reduced the number of tasks for analyzing
writing that follow each reading from four to two. We have also
refined and focused them so that students can learn more from
each reading about strategies they will need to succeed with their
own essays. Students are directed to a particular strategy in
one part of a reading, given directions for carrying out a close
analysis of the strategy, and asked to evaluate its effectiveness,
given the writer's purpose and readers. Taken together,
the eight activities in each chapter, two after each of the four
readings, provide students with a comprehensive introduction to
the features and strategies of a genre, an introduction they can
complete on their own or with the help of other students. In each
activity, the strategy of interest is identified in bold type.
A New Handbook. To provide students with a new
quick-reference Handbook for use in class or on their own, we
completed an ambitious study of students' control of sentence-level
conventions in every type of writing assigned in The St. Martin's
Guide to Writing. Experienced college writing instructors
(some of whom specialize in linguistics) and professional copy
editors analyzed the errors in over 500 essays from community
colleges, four-year colleges, and research universities. Using
this analysis, we determined our categories of error, most of
them familiar but some of them new to this Handbook. Student sentences
from our analysis provide the Handbook's hand-corrected
examples, giving students realistic models for recognizing their
own errors and correcting them. Because it centers on student
examples, the Handbook's advice is concise and straightforward,
with essential grammatical terms defined in the margin. The
Instructor's Resource Manual outlines a strategy for
enabling students to use the quick-reference Handbook productively.
A Section on Internet Research. An extensive
new section in Chapter 21 describes the World Wide Web and other
tools for accessing the Internet, including Telnet, FTP, Archie,
and Gopher, and provides suggestions for using newsgroups, discussion
groups, and E-mail as part of invention and research. A "search
in progress" on the topic of censorship on the Internet
demonstrates how to use various search strategies to locate information.
Improved MLA and APA Guidelines. Updated to
reflect the latest editions of the MLA Handbook for Writers
of Research Papers and the Publication Manual of the American
Psychological Association, the guidelines are now separated
for easier reference. Guidelines for citing electronic sources,
including Web sites, E-mail correspondence, and postings to newsgroups
or discussion groups, are also provided.
Full Color Design. The new design highlights
collaborative activities, lists of basic features, guidelines
for peer review, and other important activities and information
throughout the text.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
Numerous resources accompany The St. Martin's Guide
to Writing.
The Instructor's Resource Manual, by Rise B. Axelrod,
Charles R. Cooper, and Lenora P. Smith of the University of Houston,
includes a catalog of helpful advice for new instructors (by Alison
M. Warriner, Sacred Heart University), guidelines on common teaching
practices such as assigning journals and setting up group activities,
guidelines on responding to and evaluating student writing (by
Charles Cooper), guidelines on helping students to prepare for
writing assessment tests, suggested course plans, detailed chapter
plans, an annotated bibliography in composition and rhetoric,
and a selection of background readings.
New to this edition are service-learning projects and two new
articles on collaborative writing and using computers in the classroom.
Free Falling and other student essays, Third Edition, edited
by Paul Sladky (Augusta College), formerly The Great American
Bologna Festival and other student essays, is a collection
of essays written by students across the nation using The St.
Martin's Guide. The ten chapters in the book correspond
to those in Part I of the Guide. The book includes forms
for the submission of students' essays so that we may consider
them for possible publication in future editions.
Who Are We? Readings in Identity and Community and Work and
Career, prepared by Rise B. Axelrod and Charles R. Cooper,
contains selections that expand on the two new themes in the fifth
edition. Full of ideas for classroom discussion and writing, the
readings offer students additional perspectives and thought-provoking
analysis.
The St. Martin's Guide for Writing in the Disciplines:
A Guide for Faculty, by Richard Bullock (Wright State University),
is a handy reference for faculty, with ideas for using writing
in courses across the curriculum. Among the topics covered are
designing assignments that get students writing, using informal
writing activities to help students to learn, assigning portfolios,
and responding to student writing.
Designed to support classroom instruction, a packet of transparencies
includes lists of important features for each genre, critical
reading guides, collaborative activities, and checklistsóall
adapted from the text.
Exercises for The St. Martin's Guide to Writing,
by Charlotte Smith of Adirondack Community College, provides opportunities
for practice and review. Designed to accompany the revised handbook,
the exercise booklet includes fifty exercises and an answer key.
Student Writer Software is an easy-to-use process writing
program with exercises and an online handbook.
MicroGrade: A Teacher's Gradebook is an easy-to-use
new software program for tracking grades and producing progress
reports. It can be used on any computer system.
