Book picks similar to
Academic Writing for Graduate Students: Essential Tasks and Skills by John M. Swales
writing
academic-writing
non-fiction
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The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory
J.A. Cuddon - 1982
Geared toward students, teachers, readers, and writers alike, The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory explains critical jargon (intertextuality, aporia), schools of literary theory (structuralism, feminist criticism), literary forms (sonnet, ottava rima), and genres (elegy, pastoral) and examines artifacts, historic locales, archetypes, origins of well-known phrases, and much, much more. Scholarly, straightforward, comprehensive, and even entertaining, this is a resource that no word-lover should be without.
Everything's an Argument with Readings
Andrea A. Lunsford - 1998
Newly streamlined, its signature engaging, and jargon-free instruction emphasizes cultural currency, humor, and visual argument. Students love Everything's an Argument because it helps them understand how a world of argument already surrounds them; instructors love it because it helps students construct their own personally meaningful arguments about that world. The print text is now integrated with e-Pages for Everything's an Argument, designed to take advantage of what the Web can do. Also available in a brief version without the reader and as an e-Book.
Grammar to Enrich & Enhance Writing
Constance Weaver - 2008
Born from the ideas and research in her much-loved Teaching Grammar in Context, and benefiting from the creativity of her colleague Jonathan Bush, this new resource goes even further to bring the best research, theory, and practices into the classroom. Grammar to Enrich and Enhance Writing is three helpful books in one. In the first part, Weaver outlines the latest theories, research, and principles that underlie high-quality grammar instruction for writing. She demonstrates that specific, effective grammar-teaching practices: address all of the 6 Traits of writing instructionemphasize depth, not breadthshould be positive, productive, and practical-not stodgy, correct, and limitingmust be incorporated throughout the writing process, not broken out in isolated units.In part two, Weaver links theory and practice. Her explicit, classroom-proven teaching ideas, strategies, and lessons address key subjects as diverse as helping students make better stylistic use of modifiers, incorporating grammar into revision, and mapping grammar instruction to the curriculum. Mostly in part three, she invites members of the field into a discussion of high-quality grammar instruction. Jeff Anderson (Mechanically Inclined)Rebecca Wheeler (Code-Switching), and other practicing teachers describe their teaching-how they model the vital role grammar plays in guiding students through the editing process, how they respond to student errors, how they help English Language Learners edit for conventional English, and how grammar supports code-switching among speakers of African American English. Like Weaver's, their ideas are ready for immediate classroom implementation. With all this, plus a brief primer on crucial grammatical concepts, Grammar to Enrich and Enhance Writing is what teachers have been waiting for: an up-to-date, ready-to-use, comprehensive resource for leading students to a better understanding of grammar as an aid to more purposeful, detailed, and sophisticated writing. To request this title as a Desk/Exam copy, click here.
Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t: Why That Is And What You Can Do About It
Steven Pressfield - 2016
And the secret phrase is this:NOBODY WANTS TO READ YOUR SH*T. Recognizing this painful truth is the first step in the writer's transformation from amateur to professional. From Chapter Four: “When you understand that nobody wants to read your shit, you develop empathy. You acquire the skill that is indispensable to all artists and entrepreneurs—the ability to switch back and forth in your imagination from your own point of view as writer/painter/seller to the point of view of your reader/gallery-goer/customer. You learn to ask yourself with every sentence and every phrase: Is this interesting? Is it fun or challenging or inventive? Am I giving the reader enough? Is she bored? Is she following where I want to lead her?"
Understanding by Design
Grant P. Wiggins - 1998
Drawing on feedback from thousands of educators around the world who have used the UbD framework since its introduction in 1998, the authors have revised and expanded their original work to guide educators across the K16 spectrum in the design of curriculum, assessment, and instruction. With an improved UbD Template at its core, the book explains the rationale of backward design and explores in greater depth the meaning of such key ideas as essential questions and transfer tasks. Readers will learn why the familiar coverage- and activity-based approaches to curriculum design fall short, and how a focus on the six facets of understanding can enrich student learning. With an expanded array of practical strategies, tools, and examples from all subject areas, the book demonstrates how the research-based principles of Understanding by Design apply to district frameworks as well as to individual units of curriculum. Combining provocative ideas, thoughtful analysis, and tested approaches, Understanding by Design, Expanded 2nd Edition, offers teacher-designers a clear path to the creation of curriculum that ensures better learning and a more stimulating experience for students and teachers alike.
Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within
Natalie Goldberg - 1986
In her groundbreaking first book, she brings together Zen meditation and writing in a new way. Writing practice, as she calls it, is no different from other forms of Zen practice--"it is backed by two thousand years of studying the mind." This edition includes a new preface and an interview with the author.
Merchants of Culture: The Publishing Business in the Twenty-First Century
John Brookshire Thompson - 2010
For nearly five centuries the methods and practices of book publishing remained largely unchanged, but at the dawn of the twenty-first century the industry finds itself faced with perhaps the greatest challenges since Gutenberg. A combination of economic pressures and technological change is forcing publishers to alter their practices and think hard about the future of the books in the digital age.In this book - the first major study of trade publishing for more than 30 years - Thompson situates the current challenges facing the industry in an historical context, analysing the transformation of trade publishing in the United States and Britain since the 1960s. He gives a detailed account of how the world of trade publishing really works, dissecting the roles of publishers, agents and booksellers and showing how their practices are shaped by a field that has a distinctive structure and dynamic. This new paperback edition has been thoroughly revised and updated to take account of the most recent developments, including the dramatic increase in ebook sales and its implications for the publishing industry and its future.
Scientific Writing and Communication: Papers, Proposals, and Presentations
Angelika H. Hofmann - 2009
This unique all-in-one handbook begins with a discussion of the basics of scientific writing style and composition and then applies these principles to writing research papers, review articles, grant proposals, research statements, and resum�s as well as to preparing academic presentations and posters.FEATURES:A practical presentation carefully introduces such basic writing mechanics as word choice and word location, sentence structure, and paragraph organization before moving into manuscript planning and organizational strategies. Extensive hands-on guidance for composing scientific documents and presentations then follows.Relevant and multi-disciplinary examples taken from real research papers and grant proposals by writers ranging from students to Nobel Laureates illustrate clear technical writing as well as common mistakes that one should avoid. Examples are drawn from a broad range of scientific disciplines including medicine, molecular biology, biochemistry, ecology, geology, chemistry, engineering, and physics.Extensive end-of-chapter exercise sets provide the opportunity to review style and composition principles and encourage readers to apply them to their own writing.Writing guidelines and revision checklists warn scientists against common pitfalls and equip them with the most successful techniques to revise a scientific paper, review article, or grant proposal.Annotated text passages bring the writing principles and guidelines to life by applying them to real-world, relevant, and multidisciplinary examples.Clear, easy-to-follow writing style is understandable to both native and non-native English speakers; special ESL features address problems faced by non-native English speakers.Eight chapters on grant writing demonstrate how to write successful grant applications and how to avoid the most common application mistakes.Covering all the facets of communication that scientists need to master, Scientific Writing and Communication: Papers, Proposals, and Presentations is ideal for a wide range of readers--from upper-level undergraduates and graduate students to postdoctoral fellows, faculty, and professional researchers--in the life sciences, medicine, psychology, chemistry, and engineering.
Becoming a Writer
Dorothea Brande - 1934
Brande believed passionately that although people have varying amounts of talent, anyone can write. It's just a question of finding the "writer's magic"--a degree of which is in us all. She also insists that writing can be both taught and learned. So she is enraged by the pessimistic authors of so many writing books who rejoice in trying to put off the aspiring writer by constantly stressing how difficult it all is.With close reference to the great writers of her day--Wolfe, Forster, Wharton and so on--Brande gives practical but inspirational advice about finding the right time of day to write and being very self disciplined about it--"You have decided to write at four o'clock, and at four o'clock you must write." She's strong on confidence building and there's a lot about cheating your unconscious which will constantly try to stop you writing by coming up with excuses. Then there are exercises to help you get into the right frame of mind and to build up writing stamina. She also shows how to harness the unconscious, how to fall into the "artistic coma," then how to re-emerge and be your own critic.This is Dorothea Brande's legacy to all those who have ever wanted to express their ideas in written form. A sound, practical, inspirational and charming approach to writing, it fulfills on finding "the writer's magic."
Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom
bell hooks - 1994
Teaching students to "transgress" against racial, sexual, and class boundaries in order to achieve the gift of freedom is, for hooks, the teacher's most important goal.Bell hooks speaks to the heart of education today: how can we rethink teaching practices in the age of multiculturalism? What do we do about teachers who do not want to teach, and students who do not want to learn? How should we deal with racism and sexism in the classroom?Full of passion and politics, Teaching to Transgress combines practical knowledge of the classroom with a deeply felt connection to the world of emotions and feelings. This is the rare book about teachers and students that dares to raise critical questions about eros and rage, grief and reconciliation, and the future of teaching itself."To educate as the practice of freedom," writes bell hooks, "is a way of teaching that any one can learn." Teaching to Transgress is the record of one gifted teacher's struggle to make classrooms work.–from the back of the book
The Creative Writing MFA Handbook: A Guide for Prospective Graduate Students
Tom Kealey - 2005
The handbook includes profiles of fifty creative writing programs, guidance through the application process, advice from current students and professors including George Saunders, Aimee Bender, Tracy K. Smith, and Geoffrey Wolff, and the most comprehensive listings of graduate writing programs in and outside the United States. The handbook also includes special sections about Low-Residency writing programs, Ph.D. programs, publishing in literary journals, and workshop and teaching advice.In a remarkably concise, user-friendly fashion, The Creative Writing MFA Handbook answers as many questions as possible, and is packed with information, advice, and experience.
Teaching Arguments: Rhetorical Comprehension, Critique, and Response
Jennifer Fletcher - 2015
Students need to know how writers’ and speakers’ choices are shaped by elements of the rhetorical situation, including audience, occasion, and purpose. In
Teaching Arguments: Rhetorical Comprehension, Critique, and Response
, Jennifer Fletcher provides teachers with engaging classroom activities, writing prompts, graphic organizers, and student samples to help students at all levels read, write, listen, speak, and think rhetorically. Fletcher believes that, with appropriate scaffolding and encouragement, all students can learn a rhetorical approach to argument and gain access to rigorous academic content.
Teaching Arguments
opens the door and helps them pay closer attention to the acts of meaning around them, to notice persuasive strategies that might not be apparent at first glance. When we analyze and develop arguments, we have to consider more than just the printed words on the page. We have to evaluate multiple perspectives; the tension between belief and doubt; the interplay of reason, character, and emotion; the dynamics of occasion, audience, and purpose; and how our own identities shape what we read and write. Rhetoric teaches us how to do these things.
Teaching Arguments
will help students learn to move beyond a superficial response to texts so they can analyze and craft sophisticated, persuasive arguments—a major cornerstone for being not just college-and career-ready but ready for the challenges of the world.
Don't Be Such a Scientist: Talking Substance in an Age of Style
Randy Olson - 2009
Most scientists don't care how they are perceived, but in our media-dominated age, style points count.Enter Randy Olson. Fifteen years ago, Olson bid farewell to the science world and shipped off to Hollywood ready to change the world. With films like Flock of Dodos: The Evolution-Intelligent Design Circus (Tribeca '06, Showtime) and Sizzle: A Global Warming Comedy (Outfest '08), he has tried to bridge the cultural divide that has too often left science on the outside looking in.Now, in his first book, Olson, with a Harvard Ph.D. and formerly a tenured professor of marine biology at the University of New Hampshire, recounts the lessons from his own hilarious-and at times humiliating-evolution from science professor to Hollywood filmmaker. In Don't Be Such a Scientist, he shares the secrets of talking substance in an age of style. The key, he argues, is to stay true to the facts while tapping into something more primordial, more irrational, and ultimately more human.In a book enlivened by a profane acting teacher who made Olson realize that "nobody wants to watch you think," he offers up serious insights and poignant stories. You'll laugh, you may cry, and as a communicator you'll certainly learn the importance of not only knowing how to fulfill, but also how to arouse.
Conquering the College Admissions Essay in 10 Steps: Crafting a Winning Personal Statement
Alan Gelb - 2013
Writing a college admissions essay is no easy task—but with college essay coach and New York Times contributor Alan Gelb’s accessible and encouraging step-by-step instructions, you’ll be able to write an honest, one-of-a-kind essay that really shines. Gelb’s ten-step approach has garnered great results for the students who have tried it, many of whom were accepted into their dream schools (Harvard, Brown, Yale, and more). This to-the-point handbook shows you how to identify an engaging essay topic, and then teaches you how to use creative writing techniques to craft a narrative that expresses your unique personality, strengths, and goals. Whether you’re an A-student looking for an extra boost or a less-confident writer who needs more intensive help, Gelb’s reassuring and concise guidance will help you every step of the way, from your initial draft to final revision. In the end, you will have a well-polished, powerful, and profound personal statement that you can feel proud of—a college essay that doesn’t feel “pre-fab,” but is a real reflection of your own individuality.
Pocket Guide to APA Style
Robert Perrin - 2006
In addition to step-by-step coverage of documentation, the book includes an overview of the research-writing process entitled "Writing Scholarly Papers" and three useful appendices. Thorough and practical, this convenient reference guide is also less expensive and easier for undergraduates to use than the APA Manual. The Second Edition features expanded coverage of electronic sources to keep students up-to-date on using and evaluating Internet references in their research. In addition, this new edition provides more guidance on avoiding plagiarism. The two sample APA-style papers--one argumentative and one experimental--are carefully annotated to give students extra support as they master the elements of manuscript preparation and documentation principles.