The Prentice Hall Reader, Seventh Edition - Softcover

Miller, George

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0131828010 ISBN 13: 9780131828018

Publisher: Pearson College Div, 2003

Synopsis

This best-selling collection features ten chapters focusing on the classic methods of narration, description, argument, and persuasion. It contains classic and contemporary essays about popular culture, along with advice about how to read analytically, and how to write persuasively and effectively. Each chapter is organized clearly and effectively, enabling the reader to not only understand each essay and but also what the writer was trying to convey. An excellent reference work as well as an interesting and thoughtful collection of essays.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

This best-selling rhetorical modes reader features ten chapters focusing on classic rhetorical modes such as narration, description and argument and persuasion. Each chapter offers readings scaled by difficulty, suggestions for using the strategy in other disciplines, connecting and anticipating questions, detailed writing exercises and extensive revision activities.

New Features:

• Literary examples of the organizational strategies added to each chapter to help students connect poems or brief short stories with the given strategy.
• New prewriting and rewriting suggestions.
• "Writing Links" for each essay that focuses students' attention on how the writer uses punctuation, word choice, sentence structure, typographical devices and paragraph skills to create an effective essay.

The Companion Website™ is the largest, most extensive Website of any reader. Among its highlights, the site features hotlinks, additional background information on the readings, writing assignments and practice using Web-based materials.

Supplements Include:

• Instructor's Quiz Booklet
• Annotated Instructor's Edition with "teaching strategy" for each essay, class activities, collaborative learning activities, critical reading activities and links to writing.
• Teaching Writing with the Prentice Hall Reader that offers helpful suggestions to the new and seasoned instructor.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

The Prentice Hall Reader is predicated on two premises: that reading plays a vital role in learning how to write and that writing and reading can best be organized around the traditional division of discourse into a number of structural patterns. Such a division is not the only way that the forms of writing can be classified, but it does have several advantages.

First, practice in these structural patterns encourages students to organize knowledge and to see the ways in which information can be conveyed. How else does the mind know except by classifying, comparing, defining, or seeking cause and effect relationships? Second, the most common use of these patterns occurs in writing done in academic courses. There students are asked to narrate a chain of events, to describe an artistic style, to classify plant forms, to compare two political systems, to tell how a laboratory experiment was performed, to analyze why famine occurs in Africa, to define a philosophical concept, or to argue for or against building a space station. Learning how to structure papers using these patterns is an exercise that has immediate application in students' other academic work. Finally, because the readings use these patterns as structural devices, they offer an excellent way in which to integrate reading into a writing course. Students can see the patterns at work and learn how to use them to become more effective writers and better, more efficient readers.

WHAT IS NEW IN THE SEVENTH EDITION

The seventh edition of The Prentice Hall Reader features 54 essays, 15 of which are new, and another 11 papers written by student writers. Also new to this edition are 9 poems or short, short stories that show the organizational strategies at work. As in the previous editions, the readings are chosen on the basis of several criteria: how well they demonstrate a particular pattern of organization, appeal to a freshman audience, and promote interesting and appropriate discussion and writing activities.

The seventh edition of The Prentice Hall Reader includes a number of new features:

• Literary Examples of Each Organizational Strategy. A poem or short, short story has been added to each of the nine chapters. These creative examples show how the strategies can be used to structure not just essays, but poetry and fiction as well. Each selection has discussion questions and writing suggestions.
• New Prewriting and Rewriting Suggestions. Each of the 9 chapters ends with a list of prewriting and rewriting suggestions for that particular strategy. The suggestions offer students a convenient checklist of appropriate activities. Writing Links. Each essay has a "Writing Link" that focuses students' attention on how the writer uses punctuation, word choice, sentence structure, typographical devices, and paragraph skills to create an effective essay. The links will help build bridges between the content of the essays and the writing skills they reveal.
• New Chapter Introductions. Each chapter introduction has been rewritten to emphasize the visual display of information.

The seventh edition retains and improves upon some of the popular student features from earlier editions:

• Visualizing. Sections in each chapter show how the writing strategy is embodied in visual forms. A panel cartoon is a narrative, a technical drawing details a process, advertisements (even for products that do not exist!) show persuasion at work.
• Writing in Other Disciplines. Each chapter provides examples of how the traditional patterns of organization are used in writing for other college courses.
• Prereading Questions. These questions help connect the reading to students' experience and focus their reading attention.
• Writers on Writing. Writers share their observations on the process of finding a subject, composing, and revising.
• Links to the Website. The Prentice Hall Reader has a massive site at http://www.prenhall.com/miller. Additional materials for discussion, background information and reading suggestions, additional writing suggestions, and a group of Web links are available for every reading in every chapter. Each chapter also has Web-based writing tasks, asking students to visit a site or a series of sites, gather information, and respond to a writing prompt. Students can use the Reader as they learn how to navigate the Web to find sources of information for their papers.
• Tips on Web Searching. Students who find that their Web searches yield too many matches can get help in defining searches more narrowly.
• Writing Suggestions. Between the writing suggestions offered in the Reader itself and the additional topics found at the Website, the Reader has nearly 500 writing suggestions.

OTHER DISTINCTIVE FEATURES OF THIS TEXT

PROSE IN REVISION

As every writing instructor knows, getting students to revise is never easy. Having finished a paper, most students do not want to see it again, let alone revise it. Furthermore, for many students revising means making word substitutions and correcting grammatical and mechanical errors—changes that instructors regard as proofreading, not revising. To help make the need for revision more vivid and to show how writers revise, the Prentice Hall Reader includes three features:

1. Chapter 10: Revising. A complete chapter with a lengthy introduction offers specific advice on how to revise. A case study of Gordon Grice's essay on the black widow spider documents the evolution of the essay from notebook entries to its original publication in a small literary journal.
2. The introduction to each chapter of readings includes a first draft of a student essay, a comment on the draft's strengths and weaknesses, and a final, revised draft. These essays, realistic examples of student writing, model the student revision process.
3. A list of specific prewriting and rewriting activities can be found at the end of each chapter of readings.

SELECTIONS

The seventh edition of The Prentice Hall Reader offers instructors flexibility in choosing readings. No chapter has fewer than five selections and most have six or more. The readings are scaled in terms of length and sophistication. The selections in each chapter begin with a student essay and the selections from professional writers are arranged so that they increase in length and in difficulty and sophistication.

WRITING SUGGESTIONS

Each reading is followed by four writing suggestions: the first is a journal writing suggestion; the second calls for a paragraph-length response; the third, an essay; and the fourth, an essay involving research. Each of the suggestions is related to the content of the reading and each calls for a response in the particular pattern or mode being studied. The material in the Annotated Instructor's Edition includes a fifth writing suggestion for each reading. Even more writing suggestions can be found at the Prentice Hall Reader Website at http://www.prenhall.com/miller.

INTRODUCTIONS

The introduction to each chapter offers clear and succinct advice to the student on how to write that particular type of paragraph or essay. The introductions anticipate questions, provide answers, and end with a checklist, titled "Some Things to Remember," to remind students of the major concerns they should have when writing.

HOW TO READ AN ESSAY

The first introductory section offers advice on how to read an essay, following prereading, reading, and rereading models. A sample analysis of an essay by Lewis Thomas shows how to use this reading model to prepare an essay for class.

HOW TO WRITE AN ESSAY

The section, "How to Write an Essay," offers an overview of every stage of the writing process, starting with advice on how to define a subject, purpose, and audience and an explanation of a variety of prewriting techniques. The section also shows students how to write a thesis statement, how to decide where to place that statement in an essay, and how to approach the problems of revising an essay. Finally it contains a student essay as well as two drafts of the student's two opening paragraphs.

ANNOTATED INSTRUCTOR'S EDITION

An annotated edition of The Prentice Hall Reader is available to instructors. Each of the selections in the text is annotated with

• A Teaching Strategy that suggests ways in which to teach the reading and to keep attention focused on how the selection works as a piece of writing
• A suggested link to other writing and organizational strategies found in the reading
• Appropriate background information that explains allusions or historical contexts
• Specific class and collaborative learning activities that can be used with the reading
• A critical reading activity
• Possible responses to all of the discussion questions included within the text
• Tips on "related readings" that suggest how to pair essays in the reader
• An additional writing suggestion

INSTRUCTOR'S QUIZ BOOKLET

A separate Instructor's Quiz Booklet for The Prentice Hall Reader is available from your Prentice Hall representative. The booklet contains two quizzes for each selection in the reader—one on content and the other on vocabulary. Each quiz has five multiple-choice questions. The quizzes are intended to be administered and graded quickly. They provide the instructor with a brief and efficient means of testing the student's ability to extract significant ideas from the readings and of demonstrating his or her understanding of certain vocabulary words as they are used in the essays. Keys to both content and vocabulary quizzes are included at the back of the Quiz Booklet.

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About this edition

• Publisher: Pearson College Div
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0131828010
• ISBN 13: 9780131828018
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 704