Writing Analytically, 6th Edition - Rosenwasser, David & Stephen, Jill [8]
HOW TO USE THIS BOOK
Writing Analytically is designed to be used in first-year writing courses or seminars, as well as in more advanced writing-intensive courses in a variety of subject areas. Though the book’s chapters form a logical sequence, each can also stand alone and be used in different sequences.
We assume that most professors will want to supply their own subject matter for students to write about. The book does, however, contain writing exercises throughout that can be applied to a wide range of materials—print and visual, text-based (reading) and experiential (writing from direct observation). In the text itself we suggest using newspapers, magazines, films, primary texts (both fiction and nonfiction), academic articles, textbooks, television, historical documents, places, advertising, photographs, political campaigns, and so on.
There is, by the way, an edition of this book that contains readings—Writing Analytically with Readings. It includes writing assignments that call on students to apply the skills in the original book to writing about the readings and to using the readings as lenses for analyzing other material.
The writing exercises in Writing Analytically take two forms: end-of-chapter assignments that could produce papers, and informal writing exercises called “Try This” that are embedded inside the chapters near the particular skills being discussed. Many of the “Try This” exercises can generate papers, but usually they are more limited in scope, asking readers to experiment with various kinds of data-gathering and analysis.
Interspersed throughout the text are brief commentaries on writing called Voices from Across the Curriculum. These were written for the book by professors at our college from disciplines other than English, Rhetoric, and Composition. The Voices speak directly to students on stylistic, rhetorical, and epistemological differences across the curriculum, including disciplinary protocols, such as the one governing the lab report in the natural and social sciences.
No single text or first-year writing course can prepare students for all of the kinds of writing they will be asked to do in college and in their professional lives. But writing texts like this one can school students in the attitudes and skills they’ll need to adapt quickly to writing in the disciplines. Our book also foregrounds the many values and expectations that the disciplines share about writing.
WHAT’S NEW IN THIS EDITION
In general, we have responded to reader requests for more examples of writing using the book’s heuristics, more bullet lists, more concise rationales, better contextualizing of the Voices from Across the Curriculum, and improved navigability to make the book more browseable and easier to use. We decided that the book’s step-by-step “how-to” instructions for key heuristics, such as 10 on 1, uncovering assumptions, and “The Method” (looking for patterns of repetition and contrast) needed to be clearer and less embedded in text. We also wished to have an opening chapter that would better frame and preview the book (and the field of Rhetoric and Composition) without trying to cover everything in one chapter.
We have aimed for shorter paragraphs, more heads, and more directive heads. We have sought to make individual chapters browseable by including in the opening paragraphs of each a PowerPoint-like “slide” that lists the key writing procedures in the chapter.
Throughout chapters, our headings also seek to offer browseable advice rather than just stating topics. Readers repeatedly tell us that they like chapters such as Recognizing and Fixing Weak Thesis Statements, Using Sources Analytically, and Introductions and Conclusions, because the heads offer a kind of outline of the chapter’s advice.
We are excited about the new first chapter and its modular format. Reviewers over the years have asked us to move a number of things forward in the book, such as our critique of five-paragraph form. If we were to comply