01 / Reading Guide
Reading Guide
Who this book is for
For students entering college-level writing or returning to academic work after a break. The chapters address the reader as a developing writer, making the collection suitable for selective reading alongside an assignment. Different authors offer perspectives that can be compared and tested rather than treated as one universal formula for a successful essay.
Prerequisites
Bring experience writing short school essays and an actual assignment to work on. No literary-theory course is required. Be prepared to revise a draft and explain why a particular writing decision suits its purpose and audience.
What it covers
Volume 1 includes discussions of academic writing, interpreting assignments, invention, rhetorical analysis, argument, first-person voice, reflective revision, research with Wikipedia, patchwriting, collaboration and genre. These essays concentrate on choices writers make and the situations in which those choices matter. They can supplement a writing course without pretending that every discipline uses identical conventions or evaluation criteria.
How to use it
Choose a chapter matching a difficulty in your current draft. Apply one strategy, retain the earlier version and write a short account of the change and its effect. Use the genre chapter to compare two real examples of a target assignment. When researching, distinguish a source-finding tool from a source supporting your claim, and keep enough citation information to retrace your evidence.
Edition and sources
Parlor Press published the collection in 2010. The complete 288-page PDF is supplied by Writing Spaces, and ISBN 9781602351851 identifies the Adobe ebook. Unless noted otherwise, essays use CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 US and the project’s terms of use. Free reading and sharing should respect those noncommercial and no-derivatives conditions. Bibliographic record. Complete free text.
