Writing Analytically, 6th Edition - Rosenwasser, David & Stephen, Jill.original_ [8]
Writing Analytically’s employment of verbal prompts like “So what?” and its recommendation of step-by-step procedures, such as the procedure for making a thesis evolve, should not be confused with prescriptive slot-filler formulae for writing. Our book does not prescribe a fill-in-the-blank grid for producing papers. Instead it offers schematic descriptions of what good thinkers do—as acts of mind—when they are confronted with data.
We continue to believe that the book’s way of describing the analytical thought process will make students more confident thinkers, better able to contend with complexity and to move beyond the simplistic agree/disagree response and passive assembling of information. We have faith in the book’s various formulae and verbal prompts for their ability to spur more thoughtful writing but also for the role they can play in making the classroom a more collaborative space. When students and teachers can share the means of idea production, class discussion and writing become better connected, and students can more easily learn to see that good ideas don’t just happen—they’re made.
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newspapers, magazines, films, primary texts (both fiction and nonfiction), academic articles, textbooks, television, historical documents, places, advertising, photographs, political campaigns, and so on.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