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Read, Write, Think: Strategies for Essay Writing, 1st Edition

By Almonte
Instructional Resources
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Soft Cover
ISBN-10: 0176501223
ISBN-13: 9780176501228
Publisher: Top Hat
Edition: 1st

Read, Think, Write: Strategies for Essay Writing is a fresh and authoritative book created for the essay-level composition course. Lifting the curtain on the key debates in academic writing, Almonte invites students to create sophisticated essays by bringing in outside sources, using traditional structures at their disposal, and writing accurately – and by thinking critically about how and why they must write. Based on research into the specific needs of Canadian composition instructors, Richard Almonte’s approach emphasizes the development of portable, generic skills related to critical reading and writing. Read, Think, Write: Strategies for Essay Writing amplifies the academic content of communication courses with increased coverage of such topics as explaining and persuading strategies, and the role of research in writing. It is uniquely designed to give students the tools to communicate effectively in their academic work, tools that they will carry with them in their professional work.

Features

  • Perfectly tailored to the essay-level composition course, Read, Think, Write follows two fictional students, Ben and Sara, through the process of an introductory composition class. Unlike most books which use this type of rhetorical device, we get to know Ben and Sara's context as well as their work.
  • Chapter 1 discusses the process model of academic writing/composition, in which revision is the final important step after planning, researching, and drafting. It sets the stage by asking students to think carefully about what they'll learn in a writing class through the debate over the ongoing "writing crisis." In the internet age, to what degree are writing skills still important?
  • Chapters 2 and 3 cover the whys and hows of research and discuss how to integrate the results of that research into writing. Chapter 3 also includes a discussion of plagiarism.
  • Chapter 4 covers the basic structure of essays (introduction, body paragraphs, and conclusion), and then introduces students to the debate over the five-paragraph essay (too simplistic or simply effective?) as a way of showing them means of moving beyond that structure to create more sophisticated essays.
  • Chapter 5 introduces students to the debates about "writing modes." Almonte argues for an approach that uses the modes as tools that can be combined instead of ends in and of themselves, and covers eight strategies (narration, description, definition, classification, process, cause/effect, comparison/contrast, and figurative language.) Each explaining strategy includes an extract from a sample essay.
  • Chapter 6 covers eight strategies for persuasive writing: argue a position, offer a solution, change behaviour, appeal to logic, appeal to credibility, appeal to emotion, recognize faculty reasoning, and deal with audience resistance. Each persuasive strategy includes an extract from a sample essay.
  • The book reveals the key debates in academic writing, inviting readers to create sophisticated essays by bringing in outside sources, using traditional structures at their disposal, and writing accurately – and by thinking critically about how and why they must write.
  • Based on research by the author into the specific needs of Canadian composition instructors, this book's approach emphasizes the development of portable, generic skills related to critical reading and writing.
  • The text amplifies the academic content of communication courses with increased coverage of such topics as explaining and persuading strategies, and the role of research in writing.
  • Read, Think, Write is uniquely designed to give students the tools to communicate effectively in their academic work, tools that they will carry with them in their professional work

Table of Contents

  • Part One: A Context for Writing
  • Chapter 1: Writing Today and in the Past
  • Part Two: Effective Writers Bring the Outside World into Their Work
  • Chapter 2: Researching a Topic
  • Chapter 3: Integrating Your Research into Your Writing
  • Part Three: Effective Writers Use Traditional Tools at Their Disposal
  • Chapter 4: Organizing Structures
  • Chapter 5: Explaining Strategies
  • Chapter 6: Persuading Strategies
  • Chapter 7: Conclusion: The Story of Sara and Ben Ends Happily
  • Appendix A: Achieving Accuracy in Written English?
  • Appendix B: Two Early Canadian Books on Writing

Author Information

Richard Almonte

Richard Almonte holds a doctorate in English from McMaster University. He is professor of English and Business Communication in the Faculty of Business, Arts and Design at George Brown College in Toronto, where he teaches courses in Composition and Business Communication as well as electives in Business Journalism and Early Canadian Fiction.