The Prentice Hall Reader (6th Edition) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0130225630 ISBN 13: 9780130225634

Publisher: Pearson College Div, 2001

Synopsis

This classic, best-selling reader focuses on the modes of writing--offering an abundance of interesting and appealing essays and varied writing assignments to help readers develop skill in using each rhetorical mode. Features 64 readings--organized according to rhetorical mode and level of difficulty--ranging from classic to contemporary selections, and including essays written by women and minority writers. Supporting content includes separate chapters on How to Read an Essay; How to Write an Essay; and Revision; and a section on "Gathering, Using, and Documenting Sources" (including finding, using, and documenting electronic sources). Features examples of revision done by professional writers showing early drafts as well as final versions of their published works, including a case study of a revision that follows an essay from journal entries to published format--with an interview with the author. For anyone interested in gaining writing proficiency in the various rhetorical modes.

About this title

From the Back Cover

Key new features

• "On Writing" New section on writers commenting on the process and craft of writing.
• "Visualizing the Rhetorical Strategies" Each chapter includes a visual example that shows the strategy at work in organizing information.
• A new section on searching tips for Web search engines—how to find the sources you really need without facing thousands of sites.
• 25 percent new readings, including a number that deal with the Web and the Internet.

THE COMPANION WEBSITE is the largest, most extensive website of any read. Among its highlights, the site features hotlinks, additional background information on the readings, writing assignments, and practice using web-based materials. Additionally, each chapter in the text features activities and suggestions related to material on the website.

Key new features

• New readings that expand on the modes featured in the text.
• Self-graded writing activities.
• Updated bibliographies (with links) of related articles for essays in text.
• Call for student essays giving students the opportunity to submit essays for possible posting on the website.

Supplements include

• Instructor's Quiz Booklet with duplicable quizzes on vocabulary and reading comprehension.
• Annotated Instructor's Edition with a "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 suggestions to the new teacher on teaching writing and reading using the reader

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Preface

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 SIXTH EDITION

The sixth edition of The Prentice Hall Reader features 57 selections, 17 of which are new, and another 11 papers written by student writers. 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 sixth edition of The Prentice Hall Reader includes a number of new features:

• 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.
• Writers on Writing. Writers share their observations on the process of finding a subject, composing, and revising. We are not alone if we feel that writing is hard work.
• Tips for Web Searching. Type in a word or a subject on a Web search and get 100,000 matches? Get help in defining your search more narrowly.
• 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 hotlinked sites (just click your mouse!) are available for every reading in every chapter. Each chapter also has Web-based writing tasks—visit a site or a series of sites, gather information, and respond to a writing prompt. Use the Reader as you learn how to navigate the Web.

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

• Writing in Other Disciplines. Each chapter shows how the traditional patterns of organization are used in writing for other college courses.
• Finding, Using, and Documenting Sources. An appendix covers briefly every aspect of writing a research paper—including Web searches and documenting electronic sources. A new student research paper on "Ecotourism" is included.
• Pre-reading Questions. These questions help connect the reading to our experience and focus our reading attention.
• A Revision Casebook. Follow Cordon Grice's essay on the black widow spider from its first notebook entries through its first publication in a literary journal, to its edited version that appeared in Harper's magazine. In an exclusive interview, Grice discusses the writing and revising of the essay.
• Writing Suggestions. Having trouble finding a topic? Between the writing suggestions offered in the Reader itself and the additional topics you can find 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. The chapter includes three examples of how professional writers revised their work. A case study of Cordon 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, and then on to its appearance, revised again, in Harper's magazine.
2. The introduction to each chapter of readings include 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. The third writing suggestion after each selection is accompanied by prewriting and rewriting activities. In all, the text provides 170 specific rewriting activities to help students organize ideas and to revise what they have written.

SELECTIONS
The sixth 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, bringing the total number of writing suggestions in the sixth edition to nearly 300. Even more writing suggestions can be found at the Prentice Hall Reader Website 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
• Links to Writing that suggest how to use the reader to teach specific grammatical, mechanical, and rhetorical issues in writing. These "links" provide a bridge between a handbook and The Prentice Hall Reader.
• 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.

TEACHING WRITING WITH "THE PRENTICE HALL READER"
A separate manual on planning the writing and the reading in a composition course is available from your Prentice Hall representative. Primarily addressed to the new graduate teaching assistant or the adjunct instructor, the manual includes sections on teaching the writing process, including how to use prewriting activities, to conference, to design and implement collaborative learning activities, and to grade. In addition, it provides advice on how to plan a class discussion of a reading and how to avoid pointless discussions. An appendix contains an index to all of the activities and questions in The Prentice Hall Reader that involve grammatical, mechanical, sentence- or paragraph-level subjects, three additional sample syllabi, and a variety of sample course materials including self-assessment sheets, peer editing worksheets, and directions for small group activities.

"THE PRENTICE HALL READER" WEBSITE
The Reader has an extensive Website that includes additional resources for both the student and the instructor for every essay in the Reader. The Website is divided into sections on Related Readings (print or on-line documents that are related to the topic under discussion or to the author), Background Information, Web Resources (with hot-linked sites so that the students can immediately access these sites), and Additional Writing Suggestions. Each chapter also has writing tasks that involve examining Websites and documents. The Website adds a new dimension to the Reader and allows instructors to integrate the World Wide Web into their freshman English courses. Additional student essays are also available there and you can submit the best of your students' work for inclusion as well!

George Miller
University of Delaware

Edition details

• Publisher: Pearson College Div
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0130225630
• ISBN 13: 9780130225634
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 6
• Number of pages: 666
• Editor: Miller George