Write It: A Process Approach to College Essays, with Readings
Edition: 7
Copyright: 2021
Pages: 756
Edition: 7
Copyright: 2021
Pages: 756
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Recently Revised Seventh Edition Now Available!
Write It: A Process Approach to College Essays, with Readings focuses on the academic essay and its conventions. It contains activities that directly involve students in reading critically, generating ideas on a topic, developing a thesis statement, finding and using evidence to support that thesis, and revising their work for coherence and clarity.
Each chapter works to give students a solid foundation for understanding and using the writing process effectively. A series of interactive writing exercises engage students at every stage of the process and give the text a predictable structure that allows students to measure progress.
Each unit presents a reading selection that puts forward an argument on a particular topic, followed by a writing topic that requires students to respond with their own position. Each unit also includes a group of reading selections on the unit's topic. These supplemental reading selections offer students multiple points of view and foster in-depth thinking that in turn lead to more complex, interesting student essays.
Acknowledgments
Preface
Foreword
Part 1: Basic Information
Some General Guidelines
A Step-by-Step Strategy for Reading Thoughtfully
Leadership: Facing Moral and Ethical Dilemmas
An Explanation of Plagiarism and Copyright Infringement
How to Use a Handbook
The Conventional Academic Essay Structure
Plagiarism: A Crime to Be Prevented by Vicki Xiong
Two Alternative Essay Structures
The Hourglass Structure
Making Great Strides by N. J. Gleason
The Funnel Structure
When Volunteerism Isn’t Noble by Lynn Steirer
A Strategy for Writing a Timed Essay
A Closer Look at the Elements of the Conventional Argument Essay
An Introduction in an Argument Essay
Guidelines for Writing a Directed Summary
Strategies for Developing Your Ideas
Writing a Supporting Paragraph for Your Thesis Statement
An Introduction to Logical Fallacies
Transitions
An Application Exercise
Conclusions
Sample Scoring Rubric
A Closer Look at Your Control at the Sentence Level
Proofreading Your Essay for Mistakes in Grammar, Punctuation, and Mechanics
Assessing Your Grammar Mastery
Diagnostic Test 1
Sentence Skills Assessment for Diagnostic Test 1
Diagnostic Test 2
Sentence Skills Assessment for Diagnostic Test 2
Part 2: Writing Assignments
Assignment 1: “Literature and Real World Connections”
Literature and Real World Connections by Wendell Berry
Vocabulary Check
Questions to Guide Your Reading
Prewriting for a Directed Summary
Developing an Opinion and Working Thesis Statement
Prewriting to Find Support for Your Thesis Statement
Revising Your Thesis Statement
Planning and Drafting Your Essay
Getting Feedback on Your Draft
Final Draft Checklist
Reviewing Your Graded Essay
Extending the Discussion: Considering Other Viewpoints
On Some Functions of Literature by Umberto Eco
Does Great Literature Make Us Better People? by Gregory Currie
The Solitary Vice: Against Reading by Mikita Brottman
Why Literature Matters: Good Books Help Make a Civil Society by Dana Gioia
How Reading Makes Us More Human by Karen Swallow Prior
Practicing Medicine Can Be Grimm Work by Valerie Gribben
Writing without Reading by John Briggs
Assignment 2: “Why Place Matters”
Why Place Matters by Wilfred M. McClay and Ted V. McAllister
Vocabulary Check
Questions to Guide Your Reading
Prewriting for a Directed Summary
Developing an Opinion and Working Thesis Statement
Prewriting to Find Support for Your Thesis Statement
Revising Your Thesis Statement
Planning and Drafting Your Essay
Getting Feedback on Your Draft
Final Draft Checklist
Reviewing Your Graded Essay
Extending the Discussion: Considering Other Viewpoints
Why Virtual Worlds Can Matter by Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown
Settling Down by Scott Russell Sanders
from Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck
Infinite Reality by Jim Blascovich and Jeremy Bailenson
GPS and the End of the Road by Ari N. Schulman
The Importance of Place: Where Writers Write and Why by Alexandra Enders
Moving Around without Losing Your Roots by Gianpiero Petriglieri
What Happens When You Live Abroad by Chelsea Fagan
from On the Road by Jack Kerouac
Assignment 3: “Walking and the Suburbanized Psyche”
Walking and the Suburbanized Psyche by Rebecca Solnit
Vocabulary Check
Questions to Guide Your Reading
Prewriting for a Directed Summary
Developing an Opinion and Working Thesis Statement
Prewriting to Find Support for Your Thesis Statement
Revising Your Thesis Statement
Planning and Drafting Your Essay
Getting Feedback on Your Draft
Final Draft Checklist
Reviewing Your Graded Essay
Extending the Discussion: Considering Other Viewpoints
Walking by Henry David Thoreau
Street Haunting: A London Adventure by Virginia Woolf
The Chair by Dave Dawson
Wild by Cheryl Strayed
Making Great Strides by N. J. Gleason
Nightwalking: A Subversive Stroll through the City Streets by Matthew Beaumont
Learning Responsibility on City Sidewalks by Jane Jacobs
Assignment 4: “In Praise of Margins”
In Praise of Margins by Ian Frazier
Vocabulary Check
Questions to Guide Your Reading
Prewriting for a Directed Summary
Developing an Opinion and Working Thesis Statement
Prewriting to Find Support for Your Thesis Statement
Revising Your Thesis Statement
Planning and Drafting Your Essay
Getting Feedback on Your Draft
Final Draft Checklist
Reviewing Your Graded Essay
Extending the Discussion: Considering Other Viewpoints
The Shallows by Nicholas Carr
You Say Putter, I Say Potter: We’ve Called the Whole Thing Off by M. Allison Smith |
Hitting Pay Dirt by Annie Dillard
The Dance within My Heart by Pat Mora
Blue-Sky Research by Sir John Vane
The Importance of Free Time by Bhagwad Jal Park
The Lost Art of Walking by Geoff Nicholson
Assignment 5: “Shopping: A Spiritual Adventure in America”
Shopping: A Spiritual Adventure in America by Phyllis Rose
Vocabulary Check
Questions to Guide Your Reading
Prewriting for a Directed Summary
Developing an Opinion and Working Thesis Statement
Prewriting to Find Support for Your Thesis Statement
Revising Your Thesis Statement
Planning and Drafting Your Essay
Getting Feedback on Your Draft
Final Draft Checklist
Reviewing Your Graded Essay
Extending the Discussion: Considering Other Viewpoints
Delectable Materialism: Were the Critics of Consumer Culture Wrong All Along? by Michael Schudson
Shopping: The Moral Ecology of Consumption by James J. Farrell
from A World Split Apart by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
from Lead Us into Temptation: The Triumph of American Materialism by James Twitchell
Waste by Wendell Berry
Why “Retail Therapy” Works by Kit Yarrow
from Das Kapital: What Capitalist Accumulation Leads To (excerpted from vol. I, ch. 32) by Karl Marx
Assignment 6: “In Defense of Masks”
In Defense of Masks by Kenneth Gergen
Vocabulary Check
Questions to Guide Your Reading
Prewriting for a Directed Summary
Developing an Opinion and Working Thesis Statement
Prewriting to Find Support for Your Thesis Statement
Revising Your Thesis Statement
Planning and Drafting Your Essay
Getting Feedback on Your Draft
Final Draft Checklist
Reviewing Your Graded Essay
Extending the Discussion: Considering Other Viewpoints
Appearance Equals Identity by Ted Polhemus
Metaperceptions: How Do You See Yourself? by Carlin Flora
The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf
Differentiating the Hijab from the Headscarf by Rawan AbuShaban
The Style Imperative by Hara Estroff
The Importance of Getting Your Appearance in Order by Chris MacLeod
Assignment 7: “Why We Take Pictures”
Why We Take Pictures by Susan Sontag
Vocabulary Check
Questions to Guide Your Reading
Prewriting for a Directed Summary
Developing an Opinion and Working Thesis Statement
Prewriting to Find Support for Your Thesis Statement
Revising Your Thesis Statement
Planning and Drafting Your Essay
Getting Feedback on Your Draft
Final Draft Checklist
Reviewing Your Graded Essay
Extending the Discussion: Considering Other Viewpoints
Every Portrait Tells a Lie by Debra Brehmer
Photographs of My Mother by Maxine Hong Kingston
Experience and Image: The Essential Connection by Jim Richardson
Art at Arm’s Length: A History of the Selfie by Jerry Saltz
What Your Selfies Say About You by Peggy Drexler
A Thousand Pictures for a Million Words by Lash Keith Vance
Assignment 8: “Reading and Thought”
Reading and Thought by Dwight Macdonald
Vocabulary Check
Questions to Guide Your Reading
Prewriting for a Directed Summary
Developing an Opinion and Working Thesis Statement
Prewriting to Find Support for Your Thesis Statement
Revising Your Thesis Statement
Planning and Drafting Your Essay
Getting Feedback on Your Draft
Final Draft Checklist
Reviewing Your Graded Essay
Extending the Discussion: Considering Other Viewpoints
Is Google Making Us Stupid? What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr
Yes, People Still Read, but Now It’s Social by Steven Johnson
The Tomes They Are A-Changing by Benedict Jones
Reading Won’t Make You a Better Person: Enough of This Sanctimonious Blather by Leo Robson
Is Reading Really at Risk? It Depends on What the Meaning of Reading Is by Joseph Epstein
The Future of Books by Kathryn Keeton
The Death of Reading: Will a Nation That Stops Reading Eventually Stop Thinking? by Mitchell Stephens
Assignment 9: Arguments through Literature: “The Monkey Garden”
Understanding and Responding to Arguments in Literature
Chapter IX from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
Strategies for Identifying an Argument in Literature
Developing an Opinion and Working Thesis Statement
The Monkey Garden by Sandra Cisneros
Vocabulary Check
Questions to Guide Your Reading
Prewriting for a Directed Summary
Developing an Opinion and Working Thesis Statement
Prewriting to Find Support for Your Thesis Statement
Revising Your Thesis Statement
Planning and Drafting Your Essay
Getting Feedback on Your Draft
Final Draft Checklist
Reviewing Your Graded Essay
Part 3: Case Studies
Case Study 1: Rebecca Solnit’s “Walking and the Suburbanized Psyche”
Walking and the Suburbanized Psyche by Rebecca Solnit
Student 1
Student 2
Student 3
Student 4
Case Study 2: “Shopping: The Moral Ecology of Consumption”
Shopping: The Moral Ecology of Consumption by James J. Farrell
Student 1
Student 2
Student 3
Student 4
Case Study 3: Susan Sontag’s “Why We Take Pictures”
Why We Take Pictures by Susan Sontag
Student 1
Student 2
Student 3
Student 4
Case Study 4: Dwight Macdonald’s “Reading and Thought”
Reading and Thought by Dwight Macdonald
Student 1
Student 2
Student 3
Student 4
Student 5
A Glossary of Key Terms
Index
Recently Revised Seventh Edition Now Available!
Write It: A Process Approach to College Essays, with Readings focuses on the academic essay and its conventions. It contains activities that directly involve students in reading critically, generating ideas on a topic, developing a thesis statement, finding and using evidence to support that thesis, and revising their work for coherence and clarity.
Each chapter works to give students a solid foundation for understanding and using the writing process effectively. A series of interactive writing exercises engage students at every stage of the process and give the text a predictable structure that allows students to measure progress.
Each unit presents a reading selection that puts forward an argument on a particular topic, followed by a writing topic that requires students to respond with their own position. Each unit also includes a group of reading selections on the unit's topic. These supplemental reading selections offer students multiple points of view and foster in-depth thinking that in turn lead to more complex, interesting student essays.
Acknowledgments
Preface
Foreword
Part 1: Basic Information
Some General Guidelines
A Step-by-Step Strategy for Reading Thoughtfully
Leadership: Facing Moral and Ethical Dilemmas
An Explanation of Plagiarism and Copyright Infringement
How to Use a Handbook
The Conventional Academic Essay Structure
Plagiarism: A Crime to Be Prevented by Vicki Xiong
Two Alternative Essay Structures
The Hourglass Structure
Making Great Strides by N. J. Gleason
The Funnel Structure
When Volunteerism Isn’t Noble by Lynn Steirer
A Strategy for Writing a Timed Essay
A Closer Look at the Elements of the Conventional Argument Essay
An Introduction in an Argument Essay
Guidelines for Writing a Directed Summary
Strategies for Developing Your Ideas
Writing a Supporting Paragraph for Your Thesis Statement
An Introduction to Logical Fallacies
Transitions
An Application Exercise
Conclusions
Sample Scoring Rubric
A Closer Look at Your Control at the Sentence Level
Proofreading Your Essay for Mistakes in Grammar, Punctuation, and Mechanics
Assessing Your Grammar Mastery
Diagnostic Test 1
Sentence Skills Assessment for Diagnostic Test 1
Diagnostic Test 2
Sentence Skills Assessment for Diagnostic Test 2
Part 2: Writing Assignments
Assignment 1: “Literature and Real World Connections”
Literature and Real World Connections by Wendell Berry
Vocabulary Check
Questions to Guide Your Reading
Prewriting for a Directed Summary
Developing an Opinion and Working Thesis Statement
Prewriting to Find Support for Your Thesis Statement
Revising Your Thesis Statement
Planning and Drafting Your Essay
Getting Feedback on Your Draft
Final Draft Checklist
Reviewing Your Graded Essay
Extending the Discussion: Considering Other Viewpoints
On Some Functions of Literature by Umberto Eco
Does Great Literature Make Us Better People? by Gregory Currie
The Solitary Vice: Against Reading by Mikita Brottman
Why Literature Matters: Good Books Help Make a Civil Society by Dana Gioia
How Reading Makes Us More Human by Karen Swallow Prior
Practicing Medicine Can Be Grimm Work by Valerie Gribben
Writing without Reading by John Briggs
Assignment 2: “Why Place Matters”
Why Place Matters by Wilfred M. McClay and Ted V. McAllister
Vocabulary Check
Questions to Guide Your Reading
Prewriting for a Directed Summary
Developing an Opinion and Working Thesis Statement
Prewriting to Find Support for Your Thesis Statement
Revising Your Thesis Statement
Planning and Drafting Your Essay
Getting Feedback on Your Draft
Final Draft Checklist
Reviewing Your Graded Essay
Extending the Discussion: Considering Other Viewpoints
Why Virtual Worlds Can Matter by Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown
Settling Down by Scott Russell Sanders
from Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck
Infinite Reality by Jim Blascovich and Jeremy Bailenson
GPS and the End of the Road by Ari N. Schulman
The Importance of Place: Where Writers Write and Why by Alexandra Enders
Moving Around without Losing Your Roots by Gianpiero Petriglieri
What Happens When You Live Abroad by Chelsea Fagan
from On the Road by Jack Kerouac
Assignment 3: “Walking and the Suburbanized Psyche”
Walking and the Suburbanized Psyche by Rebecca Solnit
Vocabulary Check
Questions to Guide Your Reading
Prewriting for a Directed Summary
Developing an Opinion and Working Thesis Statement
Prewriting to Find Support for Your Thesis Statement
Revising Your Thesis Statement
Planning and Drafting Your Essay
Getting Feedback on Your Draft
Final Draft Checklist
Reviewing Your Graded Essay
Extending the Discussion: Considering Other Viewpoints
Walking by Henry David Thoreau
Street Haunting: A London Adventure by Virginia Woolf
The Chair by Dave Dawson
Wild by Cheryl Strayed
Making Great Strides by N. J. Gleason
Nightwalking: A Subversive Stroll through the City Streets by Matthew Beaumont
Learning Responsibility on City Sidewalks by Jane Jacobs
Assignment 4: “In Praise of Margins”
In Praise of Margins by Ian Frazier
Vocabulary Check
Questions to Guide Your Reading
Prewriting for a Directed Summary
Developing an Opinion and Working Thesis Statement
Prewriting to Find Support for Your Thesis Statement
Revising Your Thesis Statement
Planning and Drafting Your Essay
Getting Feedback on Your Draft
Final Draft Checklist
Reviewing Your Graded Essay
Extending the Discussion: Considering Other Viewpoints
The Shallows by Nicholas Carr
You Say Putter, I Say Potter: We’ve Called the Whole Thing Off by M. Allison Smith |
Hitting Pay Dirt by Annie Dillard
The Dance within My Heart by Pat Mora
Blue-Sky Research by Sir John Vane
The Importance of Free Time by Bhagwad Jal Park
The Lost Art of Walking by Geoff Nicholson
Assignment 5: “Shopping: A Spiritual Adventure in America”
Shopping: A Spiritual Adventure in America by Phyllis Rose
Vocabulary Check
Questions to Guide Your Reading
Prewriting for a Directed Summary
Developing an Opinion and Working Thesis Statement
Prewriting to Find Support for Your Thesis Statement
Revising Your Thesis Statement
Planning and Drafting Your Essay
Getting Feedback on Your Draft
Final Draft Checklist
Reviewing Your Graded Essay
Extending the Discussion: Considering Other Viewpoints
Delectable Materialism: Were the Critics of Consumer Culture Wrong All Along? by Michael Schudson
Shopping: The Moral Ecology of Consumption by James J. Farrell
from A World Split Apart by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
from Lead Us into Temptation: The Triumph of American Materialism by James Twitchell
Waste by Wendell Berry
Why “Retail Therapy” Works by Kit Yarrow
from Das Kapital: What Capitalist Accumulation Leads To (excerpted from vol. I, ch. 32) by Karl Marx
Assignment 6: “In Defense of Masks”
In Defense of Masks by Kenneth Gergen
Vocabulary Check
Questions to Guide Your Reading
Prewriting for a Directed Summary
Developing an Opinion and Working Thesis Statement
Prewriting to Find Support for Your Thesis Statement
Revising Your Thesis Statement
Planning and Drafting Your Essay
Getting Feedback on Your Draft
Final Draft Checklist
Reviewing Your Graded Essay
Extending the Discussion: Considering Other Viewpoints
Appearance Equals Identity by Ted Polhemus
Metaperceptions: How Do You See Yourself? by Carlin Flora
The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf
Differentiating the Hijab from the Headscarf by Rawan AbuShaban
The Style Imperative by Hara Estroff
The Importance of Getting Your Appearance in Order by Chris MacLeod
Assignment 7: “Why We Take Pictures”
Why We Take Pictures by Susan Sontag
Vocabulary Check
Questions to Guide Your Reading
Prewriting for a Directed Summary
Developing an Opinion and Working Thesis Statement
Prewriting to Find Support for Your Thesis Statement
Revising Your Thesis Statement
Planning and Drafting Your Essay
Getting Feedback on Your Draft
Final Draft Checklist
Reviewing Your Graded Essay
Extending the Discussion: Considering Other Viewpoints
Every Portrait Tells a Lie by Debra Brehmer
Photographs of My Mother by Maxine Hong Kingston
Experience and Image: The Essential Connection by Jim Richardson
Art at Arm’s Length: A History of the Selfie by Jerry Saltz
What Your Selfies Say About You by Peggy Drexler
A Thousand Pictures for a Million Words by Lash Keith Vance
Assignment 8: “Reading and Thought”
Reading and Thought by Dwight Macdonald
Vocabulary Check
Questions to Guide Your Reading
Prewriting for a Directed Summary
Developing an Opinion and Working Thesis Statement
Prewriting to Find Support for Your Thesis Statement
Revising Your Thesis Statement
Planning and Drafting Your Essay
Getting Feedback on Your Draft
Final Draft Checklist
Reviewing Your Graded Essay
Extending the Discussion: Considering Other Viewpoints
Is Google Making Us Stupid? What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr
Yes, People Still Read, but Now It’s Social by Steven Johnson
The Tomes They Are A-Changing by Benedict Jones
Reading Won’t Make You a Better Person: Enough of This Sanctimonious Blather by Leo Robson
Is Reading Really at Risk? It Depends on What the Meaning of Reading Is by Joseph Epstein
The Future of Books by Kathryn Keeton
The Death of Reading: Will a Nation That Stops Reading Eventually Stop Thinking? by Mitchell Stephens
Assignment 9: Arguments through Literature: “The Monkey Garden”
Understanding and Responding to Arguments in Literature
Chapter IX from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
Strategies for Identifying an Argument in Literature
Developing an Opinion and Working Thesis Statement
The Monkey Garden by Sandra Cisneros
Vocabulary Check
Questions to Guide Your Reading
Prewriting for a Directed Summary
Developing an Opinion and Working Thesis Statement
Prewriting to Find Support for Your Thesis Statement
Revising Your Thesis Statement
Planning and Drafting Your Essay
Getting Feedback on Your Draft
Final Draft Checklist
Reviewing Your Graded Essay
Part 3: Case Studies
Case Study 1: Rebecca Solnit’s “Walking and the Suburbanized Psyche”
Walking and the Suburbanized Psyche by Rebecca Solnit
Student 1
Student 2
Student 3
Student 4
Case Study 2: “Shopping: The Moral Ecology of Consumption”
Shopping: The Moral Ecology of Consumption by James J. Farrell
Student 1
Student 2
Student 3
Student 4
Case Study 3: Susan Sontag’s “Why We Take Pictures”
Why We Take Pictures by Susan Sontag
Student 1
Student 2
Student 3
Student 4
Case Study 4: Dwight Macdonald’s “Reading and Thought”
Reading and Thought by Dwight Macdonald
Student 1
Student 2
Student 3
Student 4
Student 5
A Glossary of Key Terms
Index