Mosaics: Focusing on Paragraphs in Context - Softcover

Flachmann, Kim

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0131893483 ISBN 13: 9780131893481

Publisher: Prentice Hall, 2004

Synopsis

This book is part of a three-part developmental series that integrates critical thinking, reading, and writing. The focus is on paragraphs as the book progresses from a discussion of the writing process (Part I) to guidelines for writing paragraphs in each rhetorical mode (Part II) to a look at writing essays (Part III) to an anthology of reading selections (Part IV) to a complete handbook of grammar and usage (Part V). Professonals looking to develop effective writing development skills.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

Students Study Their Own Writing

In addition to professional and student models, their own writing as they learn paragraph and essay development. In these chapters, students are prompted to generate their own prose early on and apply the concepts to their own writing.

A Focus on Revising and Editing

After covering the extensive Part I on the Writing Process, students will spend time on revising and editing as they learn paragraph and essay development. The author provides detailed revising and editing checklists that guide students through the revision of other students' essays as well as their own work.

Extensive Grammar Exercises

MOSAICS provides students with an extensive grammar resource in each text. Kim Flachmann's Identify, Correct, Complete, and Write exercise structure help students progress from multiple choice exercises, to fill-ins, to writing their own grammatically-correct sentences from scratch.

Prentice Hall's Largest and Most Extensive Teaching and Learning Package

With this revision of MOSAICS, Prentice Hall provides both the student and instructor with extensive print and technology supplements offering more help than ever before. See the preface for a complete, detailed list of the MOSAICS supplement package.

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

PREFACE TO THE INSTRUCTOR

Experience tells us that students have the best chance of succeeding in college if they learn how to respond productively to the varying academic demands made on them throughout the curriculum. One extremely important part of this process is being able to analyze ideas and think critically about issues in many different subject areas. Mosaics: Focusing on Paragraphs in Context is the second in a series of three books that teach the basic skills essential to all good academic writing. This series illustrates how the companion skills of reading and writing are parts of a larger, interrelated process that moves back and forth through the tasks of prereading and reading, prewriting and writing, and revising and editing. In other words, the Mosaics series shows how these skills are integrated at every stage of the writing process.

THE MOSAICS SERIES

This second edition of the Mosaics series consists of three books, each with a different emphasis: Focusing on Sentences in Context, Focusing on Paragraphs in Context, and Focusing on Essays. The first book highlights sentence structure, the second book paragraph development, and the third the composition of essays. Each book introduces the writing process as a unified whole and asks students to begin writing in the very first chapter. Each volume also moves from personal to more academic writing. The books differ in the length and level of their reading selections, the complexity of their writing assignments, the degree of difficulty of their revising and editing strategies, and the length and level of their student writing samples.

This entire three-book series is based on the following fundamental assumptions:

• Students build confidence in their ability to read and write by reading and writing.
• Students learn best from discovery and experimentation rather than from instruction and abstract discussions.
• Students need to discover their personal writing process.
• Students learn both individually and collaboratively.
• Students profit from studying both professional and student writing.
• Students benefit most from assignments that actually integrate thinking, reading, and writing.
• Students learn how to revise by following clear guidelines.
• Students learn grammar and usage rules by editing their own writing.
• Students must be able to transfer their writing skills to all their college courses.
• Students must think critically and analytically to succeed in college.

HOW THIS BOOK WORKS

Mosaics: Focusing on Paragraphs in Context teaches students how to write effective paragraphs. For flexibility and easy reference, this book is divided into five parts:

Part I: The Writing Process
Part II: Writing Effective Paragraphs
Part III: Essays: Paragraphs in Context
Part IV: From Reading to Writing
Part V: Handbook

Part I: The Writing Process. All five chapters in Part I demonstrate the cyclical nature of the writing process. They begin with the logistics of getting ready to write and then move systematically through the interlocking stages of the process by following a student essay from prewriting to revising and editing. Part I ends with a quiz that students can take to identify their "Editing Quotient"—their strengths and weaknesses in grammar and mechanics.

Part II: Writing Effective Paragraphs. Part II, the heart of the instruction in this text, teaches students how to write paragraphs by introducing the rhetorical modes as patterns of development. It moves from personal writing to more academic types of writing: describing, narrating, illustrating, analyzing a process, comparing and contrasting, dividing and classifying, defining, analyzing causes and effects, and arguing. Within each chapter, students write their own paragraphs, read professional paragraphs, study the paragraphs of other students, and finally revise and edit the paragraph they wrote earlier in the chapter. By following specific guidelines, students learn how to produce a successful paragraph using each rhetorical mode.

Part III: Essays: Paragraphs in Context. The next section of this text helps students move from writing effective paragraphs to writing effective essays. It systematically illustrates the relationship between a paragraph and an essay. Then it explains the essay through both professional and student examples. Part III ends with a series of writing assignments and workshops designed to encourage your students to write, revise, and edit an essay and then reflect on their own writing process.

Part IV: From Reading to Writing. Part IV of this text is a collection of readings arranged by rhetorical mode. Multiple rhetorical strategies are at work in most of these essays, but each is classified according to its primary rhetorical purpose. As a result, you can refer your students to particular essays in this part that demonstrate a rhetorical mode you are studying in Part II. In this way, students can actually see the features of each rhetorical mode at work in an extended piece of writing. Each professional essay is preceded by prereading activities that will help your students focus on the topic at hand and then is followed by 10 questions that move students from literal to analytical thinking skills as they consider the essay's content, purpose, audience, and paragraph structure.

Part V: Handbook. Part V is a complete handbook, including exercises, that covers eight main categories: Sentences, Verbs, Pronouns, Modifiers, Punctuation, Mechanics, Effective Sentences, and Choosing the Right Word. These categories are coordinated with the Editing Checklist that appears periodically throughout this text. Each chapter starts with five self-test questions so that students can determine their strengths and weaknesses in a specific area. The chapters provide at least three types of practice after each grammar concept, moving the students systematically from identifying exercises to writing their own sentences. Each unit ends with a practical "Editing Workshop" that asks students to use the skills they just learned to edit another student's writing and then their own writing.

APPENDIXES

The appendixes will help your students keep track of their progress in the various skills they are learning throughout this text. References to these appendixes are interspersed throughout the book so that students know when to use them as they study the concepts in each chapter:

Appendix 1: Critical Thinking Log
Appendix 2: Revising and Editing Peer Evaluation Forms
Appendix 3: Revising and Editing Peer Evaluation Forms for an Essay
Appendix 4: Test Yourself Answers
Appendix 5: Editing Quotient Error Chart
Appendix 6: Error Log
Appendix 7: Spelling Log

OVERALL GOAL

Ultimately, each book in the Mosaics series portrays writing as a way of thinking and processing information. One by one, these books encourage students to discover how the "mosaics" of their own writing process work together to form a coherent whole. By demonstrating the interrelationship among thinking, reading, and writing on progressively more difficult levels, these books promise to help prepare your students for success in college throughout the curriculum.

UNIQUE FEATURES

Several unique and exciting features separate this book from other basic writing texts:

• It moves students systematically from "personal to academic writing.
• It uses both student writing and professional writing as models.
• It demonstrates all aspects of the writing process through student writing.
• It integrates reading and writing throughout the text.
• It teaches revising and editing through student writing.
• It features culturally diverse reading selections that are of high interest to students.
• It teaches rhetorical modes as patterns of thought.
• It helps students discover their own writing process.
• It includes a complete handbook with exercises.
• It offers worksheets for students to chart their progress in reading and writing.

INSTRUCTOR'S TEACHING PACKAGE

Annotated Instructor's Edition—ISBN 0-13-094212-X. For the first time, Mosaics has an Annotated Instructor's Edition. Written by Kim Flachmann and Cheryl Smith, the AIE contains in-text answers and marginal annotations to help instructors prepare thoroughly for class. The AIE gives both experienced and new instructors tips on how to get the most out of the text, providing teaching tips, summaries of the readings, readability levels for the essays, additional writing activities, ideas for incorporating the Internet into class, and much more. This supplement is free to adopters.

Instructor's Resource Manual—ISBN 0-13-094693-1. Also written by Kim Flachmann and Cheryl Smith, the Instructor's Resource Manual contains sample syllabi, additional teaching strategies (both general and specific), sample quizzes, journal assignments, additional writing assignments, rubrics for marking essays, and much more. It is available in print or electronic format and is free to adopters.

Instructor's Resource CD. This CD contains video clips of the author discussing how to use the Mosaics series effectively in class. Designed with the new instructor in mind and organized around specific parts of each text in the series, this CD will provide instructors with concrete teaching strategies taken from Kim Flachmann's own classroom. It is free to adopters. Contact your local Prentice Hall representative for a copy.

STUDENT'S LEARNING PACKAGE

Writing Pro. An Internet-based assessment tool like no other in the developmental English market, Writing Pro provides students with summary instruction and practice on each element of writing as presented in the Mosaics series. Writing Pro includes over 200 learning modules covering the writing process, paragraph and essay development, and grammar. For each module, students have access to the following online features:

Watch Screens that provide an audio and animated summary of the content;
Recall Questions that test their comprehension of the content;
Apply Questions that test their ability to apply the concepts to existing writing;
Write Questions that prompt students to generate their own prose using the concepts.

This technology solution frees up class time by allowing students to work individually on their areas of weakness. The software measures and tracks students' progress through the course with an easy-to-use management system. Writing Pro is available at a discount when packaged with the text. Contact your local Prentice Hall representative for more information and a demonstration.

Companion Web Site: www.prenhall.com/flachmann. The Companion Web Site allows students to gain a richer perspective and a deeper understanding of the concepts and issues discussed in Mosaics: Focusing on Paragraphs in Context. This site is free to all students. Features of this site include the following:

• Chapter learning objectives that help students organize key concepts;
• On-line quizzes, which include instant scoring and coaching;
• Essay questions that test students' critical thinking skills;
• Built-in routing that gives students the ability to forward essay responses and graded quizzes to their instructors.

The New American Webster Handy College Dictionary, Third Edition—ISBN 0-13-032870-7. With over 1.5 million Signet copies in print and over 115,000 definitions, this dictionary is available free to your students when packaged with the text.

English on the Internet 2001: Evaluating Online Resources—ISBN 0-13019484-0. This completely revised guide helps students develop the critical thinking skills needed to evaluate on-line sources critically. This supplement is available free when packaged with the text.

The Prentice Hall ESL Workbook—ISBN 0-13-092323-0. This 138-page workbook is designed for use with a developmental English textbook to improve English grammar skills. Divided into seven major units, this workbook provides thorough explanations and exercises in the most challenging grammar topics for nonnative speakers of English. With over 80 exercise sets, this guide provides ample instruction and practice with nouns, articles, verbs, modifiers, pronouns, prepositions, and sentence structure. The PH ESL Workbook also contains an annotated listing of key ESL Internet sites for further study and practice, an answer key to all the exercises so that students can study at their own pace, and a glossary for students to look up difficult words and phrases. Contact your local Prentice Hall representative for a copy.

The Prentice Hall Grammar Workbook—ISBN 0-13-042188-X. This 21-chapter workbook is a comprehensive source of instruction for students who need additional grammar, punctuation, and mechanics instruction. Covering such topics as subject-verb agreement, conjunctions, modifiers, capital letters, and vocabulary, each chapter provides ample explanations, examples, and exercises. The exercises contain enough variety to ensure students' mastery of each concept. This supplement is available to students packaged by itself or with the text at a discount.

The Prentice Hall TASP Writing Study Guide—ISBN 0-13-041585-5. Designed for students studying for the Texas Academic Skills Program test, this guide prepares students for the TASP by familiarizing them with the elements of the test and giving them strategies for success. The authors, both from Prairie View A&M, provide practice exercises for each element of the writing and multiple-choice portions of exam, and the guide ends with a full-length practice test with answer key so that students can evaluate their own progress. Contact your local Prentice Hall representative for a copy.

Ask your local Prentice Hall representative for information about ever-growing list of supplements for both instructors and students.

About this edition

• Publisher: Prentice Hall
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0131893483
• ISBN 13: 9780131893481
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 3
• Number of pages: 705