College Resources with Readings

College Writing Resources is a complete resource for writing courses, providing strong, clear writing instruction to guide students in the process of composing essays in a variety of modes and an unsurpassed amount of exercises. The third of a three-book series, College Writing Resources fits perfectly in essay- and bridge-level courses. Betsy Long’s successful writing framework, the Four Cs (concise, credible, clear, correct checkpoints), is used consistently to reinforce corresponding skills.  A cultural literacy theme runs through the text as each chapter is introduced by a short Culture Note and has that topic carried throughout in illustrations, sample paragraphs, and exercises. An appealing four-color design showcases the photos and adds visual interest for an increasingly visual student body.

I. GETTING STARTED

1. Your Strengths as a Writer       

2. Having a Reader and a Reason: Understanding Audience and Purpose

3. The Bases of Good Writing: The Four Cs

II. THE WRITING PROCESS

4. Prewriting

5. Drafting: Writing a Rough Draft

6. Making Changes: Revision

7. Editing: Checking for Correctness

III. THE ELEMENTS OF GOOD WRITING  

8. Essay Paragraphs and the Thesis Statement

9. Supporting Your Ideas 10. Organizing and Linking Ideas

11. Sensitive Language

12. Confusing Words

13. Choosing the Best Word 

14. Improving Your Spelling

15. Varying Your Sentences 

16. Format

IV. STRATEGIES FOR ESSAY DEVELOPMENT  

17. Providing Illustrations and Examples   

18. Narrating an Event or Story  

19. Describing a Scene, Person, or Object

20. Classifying and Dividing 21. Explaining a Process

22. Comparison and Contrast     

23. Cause and Effect Development

24. Definition

25. Arguing a Position

26. Using More than One Organizational Strategy

V. WRITING FOR DIFFERENT PURPOSES

27. Writing an In-Class Essay

28. Writing Summaries and Reports

29. Writing to Get a Job

VI. RESEARCH

30. Searching for, Evaluating, and Integrating Information  

31. Writing a Research Essay  

VII. WRITING CORRECT SENTENCES  

Grammar diagnostic

32. Prepositional Phrases          

33. Subjects and Verbs

34. Clauses

35. Run-On Sentences

36. Fragments

37. Regular Verbs

38. Irregular Verbs

39. Subject-Verb Agreement

40. Verb Tense and Tense Consistency

41. Pronoun Types

42. Pronoun Agreement

43. Adjectives and Adverbs

44. Misplaced Modifiers

45. Dangling Modifiers

Punctuation Diagnostic

46. Commas

47. Apostrophes

48. Quotation Marks

49. Other Punctuation Marks

50. Capitalization

51. Abbreviations and Numbers

52. ESL Tips

VIII. READINGS

Readings for Informed Writing

Our Identities

READING 1 “Liked for Myself,” Maya Angelou

READING 2 “Saving the Home from Martha Stewart,” Elizabeth Austin

READING 3 “The Misery of Silence,” Maxine Hong Kingston

READING 4 “Respectable addiction,” Michael Kinsman

READING 5 “Labor,” Richard Rodriguez

READING 6 “Hearing the Sweetest Songs,” Nicolette Toussaint

Our World

READING 7 “So Tiny, So Sweet . . . So Mean,” Richard Conniff

READING 8 “Creatures That Haunt the Americas,” Constance García-Barrio

READING 9 “Four Kinds of Reading,” Donald Hall

READING 10 “Caught in the Catty Corner,” Nanci Hellmich

READING 11 “Poor Winnie the Pooh. Not even he is safe from rampant‘therapism,’ ” Ben MacIntyre

READING 12 “Two Gentlemen of the Pines,” John McPhee

Our Values

READING 13 “Whose Life is it, Anyway?” Mary Battiata

READING 14 “A Reason to Forgive,” Pat Burson

READING 15 “Petty Crime, Outrageous Punishment: Why the Three-Strikes Law Doesn’t Work,” Carl M. Cannon