The Essentials of Academic Writing is a brief rhetoric that focuses on the process of writing academic essays for college courses. The text provides a complete overview of the writing process, with concise, nuts-and-bolts coverage of researching, planning, drafting, documenting, revising, and proofreading academic papers. A sample student essay serves as a case study to illustrate each part of the process and an anthology of 19 academic essays covering a variety of disciplines and topics provides good models for student writing. As part of the English Essentials Series, this affordable title is a valuable and cost-effective rhetoric for freshman composition students and reference for students writing in all their college disciplines.
Derek Soles received his Ph.D. from the University of Victoria in 1988. He has taught at several colleges and universities in Canada and the U.S. He currently teaches at The University of British Columbia. In addition to Essentials of Academic Writing, he has written text books and many articles on composition theory and pedagogy and literary analysis.