John Langan - College Writing Skills

College Writing Skills

Eighth Edition

John Langan

Published by McGraw-Hill, an imprint of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., 1221 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020. Copyright 2011, 2008, 2005, 2001, 1997, 1993, 1989, 1985. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written consent of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., including, but not limited to, in any network or other electronic storage or transmission, or broadcast for distance learning.

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

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ISBN: 978-0-07-337165-8
MHID: 0-07-337165-3

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Credits: The credits section for this book begins on page C-1 and is considered an extension of the copyright page.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Langan, John, 1942

College writing skills / John Langan.8th ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN-13: 978-0-07-337165-8 (alk. paper)

ISBN-10: 0-07-337165-3 (alk. paper)

1. English languageRhetoric. 2. English languageGrammar. 3. Report writing. I. Title.

PE1471.L34 2010

808.042dc22

2009042360

The Internet addresses listed in the text were accurate at the time of publication. The inclusion of a Web site does not indicate an endorsement by the authors or McGraw-Hill, and McGraw-Hill does not guarantee the accuracy of the information presented at these sites.

www.mhhe.com

This is the only text I will use to teach developmental essay writing. The series meets our students needs!

Elaine Herrick, Temple College

College Writing Skills Readings has been our developmental textbook of choice for the past ten years for a good reason: His explanations and student examples of the basics of unity (staying focused), coherence (flow and connectedness), and adequate development (support) give our students the tools they need to improve their writing skills.

Paul Bush, Bowling Green Community College

College Writing Skills is a student-centered textbook. It asks students to reexamine their attitudes towards writing and then gives them the tools to succeed. Grammar, organization, and development are explained with care and precision. College Writing Skills practices what it preaches by giving clear and accessible explanations for a broad student population.

Nina Bannett, New York City College of Technology

All the sections are very manageable and teachers can arrange their courses in a variety of ways while using this text. It breaks down the writing process into clear steps and those steps can be later utilized as tools for revision. The readings are clear and engaging as well as flexible regarding rhetorical style and topic.

Laurie Sherman, Community College of Rhode Island

Its a very user friendly text and offers a variety of teaching methods.

Jessica Carroll, Miami Dade College

It is sequenced well and places the emphasis on the process of writing from the discovery of a worthy topic to writing and supporting the thesis. The checklists provided in each chapter allow the writer to have a focus for understanding what the instructor is addressing when he or she is evaluating the essay. The readings in the book are both engaging and provocative, which will lead to much discussion in the classroom.

Alison Reynolds, Midwestern State University

John Langan has taught reading and writing at Atlantic Cape Community College near Atlantic City, New Jersey, for more than twenty-five years. The author of a popular series of college textbooks on both writing and reading, John enjoys the challenge of developing materials that teach skills in an especially clear and lively way. Before teaching, he earned advanced degrees in writing at Rutgers University and in reading at Rowan University. He also spent a year writing fiction that, he says, is now at the back of a drawer waiting to be discovered and acclaimed posthumously. While in school, he supported himself by working as a truck driver, a machinist, a battery assembler, a hospital attendant, and an apple packer. John now lives with his wife, Judith Nadell, near Philadelphia. In addition to his wife and Philly sports teams, his passions include reading and turning on nonreaders to the pleasure and power of books. Through Townsend Press, his educational publishing company, he has developed the nonprofit Townsend Librarya collection of more than fifty new and classic stories that appeal to readers of any age.

College Writing Skills offers students a practical guide to becoming better writers. From mastering the traditional five-paragraph essay and its variations to learning about the finer points of grammar and punctuation, College Writing Skills empowers students to take control of their writing and put it to work for them. And now with Connect Writing, a new online writing program, and the soon to come Connect Langan, an online interactive version of College Writing Skills, this new edition brings writing closer to where students are and helps take them where you want them to go. Whether online or in class, College Writing Skills offers students the tools to succeed.

• Four principles are presented as keys to effective writing. These four principlesunity, support, coherence, and sentence skillsare reinforced throughout the book. Part 1 focuses on the first three principles. Parts 2 and 3 show, respectively, how the four principles apply in the different patterns of essay development and other types of writing. Part 4 serves as a concise handbook of sentence skills.

• Writing is treated as a process. The first chapter introduces writing as both a skill and a process of discovery. The second chapter, The Writing Process, explains and illustrates the sequence of steps in writing an effective essay, focusing on prewriting and revision strategies. More prewriting and revision strategies accompany many of the writing assignments in Part 2.