The Writer’s Workplace with Readings: Building College Writing Skills

Students learn early on that writing is a process, engaging from the very start in short skill-building activities that give them opportunities to practice the techniques and concepts taught throughout the book.

The comprehensive language development section features careful sequencing of topics, building from less complex to more complex concepts as students proceed from nouns and verbs, to phrases and fragments, to coordination and subordination. After absorbing this material, students will be able to discuss, analyze, and edit their own writing, as well as better understand instructors' comments on the papers they submit.

Carefully constructed practices, exercises, and mastery tests address different rates of learning. The extensive practice and exercise sets follow each concept so that students can practice mastering the material just covered before moving on to the next topic. Each concept builds on what has been mastered in the previous section. Exercises teaching grammar skills use continuous discourse. The answer key provides answers to all practices and to approximately one-third of the exercises, allowing students to manage their progress.

The end-of-chapter Working Together activity provides instructors with an additional or alternative lesson plan that encourages critical thinking and collaborative learning. These activities tend to stress college issues (for example, hazing) and job-related issues (for example, sexual harassment). Portfolio suggestions complement the feature and encourage students to gather and save all their writing efforts for evaluation purposes and also for ongoing and future writing projects.