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The College Writer: A Guide to Thinking, Writing, and Researching
Combining streamlined instruction in the writing process with an accessible style, THE COLLEGE WRITER is your all-in-one writing resource. Throughout the text, samples of student and professional writing in different disciplines and from different career paths highlight important features of effective writing and help you craft papers for all of your courses. A research guide, including the most current MLA and APA documentation guidelines, helps you meet all the expectations of your academic projects. Learning Outcomes in each chapter show you the key concepts you'll be expected to know.
- GenresNonfiction
768 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2017
8 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
June 23, 2022
It is done!
I am finished!
I have completely read this textbook that I have to use for my English composition courses. I have thoughts. Many thoughts.
Thought number one: why on earth is this book 700+ pages? How completely pointless. Thought number two: I sincerely hope that if we are requiring our students to buy this book, we are using it in more than just Comp 1, because seriously, this book is pointlessly expensive and long.
I would like to have some words with the designers of this book. Why on earth would you make a 700+ page textbook?!?! For a writing course?!!?! Do you expect the students to actually read it?!!? You are missing some brain cells if you do. Do you expect the TEACHERS to read it? Again, you are missing some brain cells. I would bet you, oh I don't know, $1000 that I'm the only teacher in my institution who has read this thing from cover to cover. I would bet you $100 that the authors haven't read this book from cover to cover. Why? Because it's pointlessly long!!! For a writing textbook there isn't a whole lot of writing going on. And that's the essential issue, this textbook is actually trying to be a writing curriculum, it's written to be used by someone who has no teacher, and is trying to teach themselves how to write. Which can be a fairly good exercise right up until you realize that to become a good writer you need to have your writing evaluated by others. You aren't a good writer if no one reads your work. And for all that this book talks about writing, it doesn't actually teach writing, it explains it, sure, but it doesn't teach it. Where is the practice? Where is the application of the explanation? There isn't any!
The writers are probably assuming that the teacher will provide those aspects, and we do, but when we do that it adds a great deal of time to the course, and cuts back on the amount of time that students spend reading the textbook, which again brings us back to, why is this so pointlessly long?!?!!? What inevitably happens is that teachers pick and choose different chapters for students to read and ignore the rest, which means that the students paid for a massively expensive, incredibly long book and then actually only use 10-20% of it. It's an unholy racket!
These authors fall into the same trap that every teacher falls into: I must explain all the things. You can't explain all the things. It's literally impossible. Choose the most important things, cover them well, get the students to the point where they can apply them well and that's successful. Stop trying to cover everything, go into depth on the basics and get them good at that. Yes, all of the ideas in this book are important. I agree. But you can't expect students to learn all of these ideas in one class! 700 pages! It's ridiculous! It's like this book is trying to cover everything that students should have been learning from grade one and shoving it all into a one semester college course. I get why they are doing it, we get a lot of students coming in these days that haven't gotten all of that pre-work in their elementary and secondary education, but you can't fix it just by giving superficial overviews, you have to actually fix the educational system at the beginning and teach writing skills from the get-go.
So if there are any elementary, or secondary teachers, or homeschool parents reading this little blog: teach writing from grade one. Build up a repertoire of skills like brainstorming, outlining, drafting, editing, rewriting, researching and citing, there is no reason to delay all of these things until college, you can definitely start them off young. The book report, single page essay, and journal entries are great places to start.
I am finished!
I have completely read this textbook that I have to use for my English composition courses. I have thoughts. Many thoughts.
Thought number one: why on earth is this book 700+ pages? How completely pointless. Thought number two: I sincerely hope that if we are requiring our students to buy this book, we are using it in more than just Comp 1, because seriously, this book is pointlessly expensive and long.
I would like to have some words with the designers of this book. Why on earth would you make a 700+ page textbook?!?! For a writing course?!!?! Do you expect the students to actually read it?!!? You are missing some brain cells if you do. Do you expect the TEACHERS to read it? Again, you are missing some brain cells. I would bet you, oh I don't know, $1000 that I'm the only teacher in my institution who has read this thing from cover to cover. I would bet you $100 that the authors haven't read this book from cover to cover. Why? Because it's pointlessly long!!! For a writing textbook there isn't a whole lot of writing going on. And that's the essential issue, this textbook is actually trying to be a writing curriculum, it's written to be used by someone who has no teacher, and is trying to teach themselves how to write. Which can be a fairly good exercise right up until you realize that to become a good writer you need to have your writing evaluated by others. You aren't a good writer if no one reads your work. And for all that this book talks about writing, it doesn't actually teach writing, it explains it, sure, but it doesn't teach it. Where is the practice? Where is the application of the explanation? There isn't any!
The writers are probably assuming that the teacher will provide those aspects, and we do, but when we do that it adds a great deal of time to the course, and cuts back on the amount of time that students spend reading the textbook, which again brings us back to, why is this so pointlessly long?!?!!? What inevitably happens is that teachers pick and choose different chapters for students to read and ignore the rest, which means that the students paid for a massively expensive, incredibly long book and then actually only use 10-20% of it. It's an unholy racket!
These authors fall into the same trap that every teacher falls into: I must explain all the things. You can't explain all the things. It's literally impossible. Choose the most important things, cover them well, get the students to the point where they can apply them well and that's successful. Stop trying to cover everything, go into depth on the basics and get them good at that. Yes, all of the ideas in this book are important. I agree. But you can't expect students to learn all of these ideas in one class! 700 pages! It's ridiculous! It's like this book is trying to cover everything that students should have been learning from grade one and shoving it all into a one semester college course. I get why they are doing it, we get a lot of students coming in these days that haven't gotten all of that pre-work in their elementary and secondary education, but you can't fix it just by giving superficial overviews, you have to actually fix the educational system at the beginning and teach writing skills from the get-go.
So if there are any elementary, or secondary teachers, or homeschool parents reading this little blog: teach writing from grade one. Build up a repertoire of skills like brainstorming, outlining, drafting, editing, rewriting, researching and citing, there is no reason to delay all of these things until college, you can definitely start them off young. The book report, single page essay, and journal entries are great places to start.
January 15, 2025
I’m giving this book 5 stars cause my professor in the course was hot and when I wrote an essay about the difference of lesbian and gay representation in media he said he was very interested and read up on the topic of lesbian discrimination so he’s a green flag. He’s married and has kids tho 😔
Anyways book was boring tho
Anyways book was boring tho
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews