PDF College Writing Skills - Breadan Publishing

[Pages:400]College Writing Skills

Tom Tyner Breadan Publishing

Breadan Publishing College Writing Skills

Tom Tyner

Copyright 2016 by Breadan Publishing

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Preface

College Writing Skills is a process-oriented textbook written to help students develop their college-level writing skills. The intent of College Writing Skills is to help prepare students for success in required college writing courses, in courses across the curriculum that require writing, and in occupations beyond college. Students learn by writing, and the textbook provides a variety of writing assignments that require you to develop and apply different writing and thinking skills as you progress through the book.

Essay Writing

In college composition courses, students write a variety of essays. In College Writing Skills, you write a different type of essay in each unit of the textbook, twelve essays in all. To engage your interest and allow you to draw upon your experience and knowledge, you choose your own writing topic for each type of essay: narrative, expository, persuasive, comparative, problem/solution, and critique.

Along with your twelve essay assignments, you also write timed in-class essays which will help prepare you for in-class writing in other English courses as well as essay tests across the curriculum. Experience is the best teacher for writing under in-class time constraints, and College Writing Skills provides you with eleven such experiences.

Writing Process

In each unit, you use a writing process to develop your essays. The basic process of prewriting, drafting, revision, and editing is repeated in each unit, with new instructional elements presented in each section that apply to the type of essay you are writing. The process is repeated in each unit so that you become familiar enough with it to use for any writing you may do.

The text also recognizes the individual differences among writers. For some writers, prewriting may involve detailed planning while for others, it may involve coming up with an idea to get started. The text recognizes such differences and allows for individual flexibility within the writing process rather than a one-size-fits-all model. The textbook also recognizes that some students come to the course with considerable writing experience, and you are encouraged to take both what you find valuable from the text and from your previous writing experiences to create the most effective personal writing process.

Importance of Revision

College Writing Skills also strongly emphasizes the role of revision in the writing process. Throughout the text, you work on revising and improving your writing in a number of areas: wording, organization, content development, paragraphing, openings and conclusions, transitional wording, and so on. The text provides specific revision guidelines for the type of writing you do in each unit and emphasizes the role that revision has for all writers.

Writing Correctness

As the last step in the writing process, you proofread and edit your essay drafts to eliminate errors. Being able to write "correctly" ? using correct grammar, punctuation, and spelling ? is critical to your writing success in college and beyond and an achievable goal.

Within each unit, the text provides instruction in the areas of punctuation, grammar usage, and spelling where writers have the most problems: run-on sentences and comma splices, sentence fragments, comma usage, subject-verb agreement, and so on. You also learn to proofread a draft effectively, looking in particular for your personal error tendencies.

Writing as Communication

College Writing Skills also emphasizes writing as a form of communication. To that end, you write for different reading audiences, including your classmates, and for a particular purpose: to inform, entertain, influence, educate, or move readers to action. The writing assignments in the text are "real" in the sense that they are written for others to read and for particular purposes.

Writing Samples

Throughout the text are sample essays ? first drafts and revised versions - that you can use in number of ways: to get ideas for your writing, to see how writers develop, organize, and paragraph their essays, to read and evaluate different openings and conclusions, to see how writers develop and support a thesis, or to see how writers incorporate research material into their essays. The sample essays also provide models for each type of essay that you write.

Readings

In each unit, you "take a break" from writing between essay assignments to read some in-text essays written by published writers. You read them for your personal enjoyment, to see how other writers develop their essays, and to get some ideas for your own writing. The "Questions for Discussion" at the end of each essay serve to initiate class or group discussions, including how the topics and issues in the essays may relate to your own experiences.

Table of Contents

Unit One: Narrative Writing

Writing Reflection

1

Narrative Writing

3

Writing Process

3

Prewriting

4

Focusing Your Topic

5

Free Writing

5

Drafting

8

Providing Description

8

Descriptive Words

10

Power of Verb

10

Power of Adjectives

12

First-Draft Guidelines

15

A Little Logic

17

Revision

19

Sentence Wording

19

Revision Guidelines ss

23

Peer Review

27

Editing

30

Correct Writing

30

Irregular Verbs

31

Run-on Sentences

35

Editing Guidelines

38

A Little Logic

39

Reading Break

40

"In the Face of Adversity," 40

Nelson Mandela

"Escape," Park Ji Woo

43

Using Personal Experience

for Support

46

Prewriting

47

Topic Selection

47

Drafting

49

Presenting Your Point

49

Drafting Guidelines

51

A Little Logic

53

Revision

54

Revision Guidelines

55

Editing

58

Editing Guidelines

59

Timed Writings

60

Writing the Essay

60

Timed Writing One

63

Unit Two: Expository Writing

Prewriting

65

Topic Selection

65

Audience and Purpose

66

Process Considerations

67

Drafting

68

Opening Paragraphs

68

Closing Paragraphs

70

Drafting Guidelines

71

A Little Logic

73

Revision

74

Transitional Wording

74

Revision Guidelines

78

Editing

83

Subject-verb Agreement

83

Comma Usage

89

Editing Guidelines

96

Timed Essay

97

Timed Writing Two

99

A Little Logic

99

Reading Break

100

"What Pregnant Women Won't

Tell You," Elise Anders

100

"Helping the Homeless,"

Eduard Guzman

104

Prewriting

107

Topic Selection

107

Generating Material

108

Audience and Purpose

109

Drafting

110

Paragraph Development

110

Providing Examples

114

Drafting Guidelines

119

A Little Logic

122

Revision

123

Revision Guidelines

123

Editing

127

Editing Guidelines

128

Timed Writing Three

129

Unit Three: Persuasive Writing

Prewriting

131

Topic Selection

131

Brainstorming

132

Thesis Statement

133

Thesis Support

136

Making a List

139

Opposing Viewpoints

139

Drafting

141

Reading Audience

141

Writing Purpose

143

Drafting Guidelines

146

A Little Logic

147

Revision

148

Organization

148

Revision Guidelines

150

Editing

152

Sentence Fragments

152

Commonly Confused Words 155

Editing Guidelines

160

Timed Writing Four

161

A Little Logic

162

Reading Break

"Is College Worth It?"

Alondra Frey

163

"The Intelligence of Beasts,"

Colin Woodward

166

Incorporating Research 170

Prewriting

171

Topic Selection

171

Researching Your Topic

172

Finding Sources

172

Directed Research

173

Thesis

174

Thesis Support

175

Opposing Arguments

178

Audience and Purpose

179

Drafting

180

Incorporating Research

180

Paraphrasing

180

Drafting Guidelines

183

A Little Logic

185

Revision

186

Varying Sentence Structure

186

Revision Guidelines

190

Editing

193

Double Negatives

193

Editing Guidelines

196

Timed Writing Five

198

A Little Logic

198

Unit Four: Problem Solving

Prewriting

200

Topic Selection

200

Analyzing the Problem

201

Finding Solutions

203

Thesis

204

Drafting

206

Audience and Purpose

206

Organization

207

Drafting Guidelines

207

Revision

210

Revision Guidelines

211

Editing

215

Colons, Semi-colons, Dashes 215

Pronoun Usage

219

Subject Pronouns

219

Pronoun-Antecedent

Agreement

221

Editing Guidelines

224

Timed Writing Six

225

A Little Logic

226

Reading Break

227

"Are You a Procrastinator?"

Julianne Kuroda

227

"Cyber Bullying,"

Anton Hout

230

Prewriting

233

Topic Selection

233

Researching Your Topic 234

Workable Solutions

236

Thesis

237

Organizing Research

Material

238

Drafting

239

Audience and Purpose

239

Incorporating Research

240

Avoiding Plagiarism

243

Drafting Guidelines

244

A Little Logic

247

Revision

248

Revision Guidelines

248

Editing

251

Comparative Adjectives 251

Editing Guidelines

255

Timed Writing Seven

256

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