The most successful college rhetoric published in over a decade, The Allyn & Bacon Guide to Brief Edition offers the most progressive and teachable introduction now available to academic and personal writing. The four-color guide offers engaging instruction in rhetoric and composition, a flexible sequence of comprehensive writing assignments, numerous examples of student and professional writing, and a thorough guide to research. Solidly grounded in current theory and research, yet eminently practical and teachable, The Allyn & Bacon Guide to Brief Edition has set the new standard for first-year composition courses in writing, reading, critical thinking, and inquiry.
This is a pretty good textbook for teaching beginning college writers about composition. I liked the frequent writing exercises and the peer review questions.
The readings were also fairly interesting and useful (if slanted heavily toward the left).
My main problem was the student examples. I felt like the examples were poor, and did not meet the assignment requirements. So, I have had to come up with my own examples from past student papers to show what I expect.
It would also be nice to have the teaching tips integrated in a single teacher copy, but that is a minor point.
This is my second time teaching this book and the third time reading it, and I can say that it is perfectly adequate for introductory writers. That's about it, however.
I infinitely prefer the textbook I use for my intermediate writing class, but I found the writing exercises in this to be useful for beginning students.