As we venture into this new millennium, we continue to witness dramatic changes in the contexts for the teaching of writing. The ongoing expansion of World Wide Websites, the increasing speed of access to the Internet, and the expanding number of computer classrooms and terminals available to student writers have revolutionized the teaching and practice of writing. On the Internet, writers can quickly access an incredible range of information, both about specific subjects and about the process of writing and revising. On local networks, students continue conversations started in print media or in the classroom, get and receive peer advice about drafting and revision, and access teacher response. Distance learning in this brave new century is a practical reality, as students sitting at computers in different cities or countries communicate as easily as students sitting at adjoining computers.

The more things change, however, the more they remain the same. Writers still need to learn critical reading skills. They still need to assess rhetorical contexts, establish rhetorical purpose, consider their audiences and readers, develop and organize their ideas, and learn how to revise and edit their writing to meet the rhetorical situation. They still need to learn to work cooperatively and collaboratively to create a writing community. Computers and networks are merely electronic means for communicating–for putting people in contact with people, writers in contact with readers. Computers and networks can continue teachers’ efforts to communicate with their students and to center their curriculum on the students’ reading, writing, and revising.

In its fifth edition, The Prentice Hall Guide for College Writers retains an emphasis on aims and purposes for reading and writing, on a clear sequence of chapters that move from expressive to argumentative writing, and on extensive, integrated writing process advice that helps students learn to read, write, and revise. Providing ongoing support for both students and teachers during the reading, writing, and revising processes remains the overriding goal of this text.

Continued in the fifth edition is an emphasis on critical reading and responding to texts. Chapter Five–Reading–uses the summary/response essay as a means to teach active and critical reading, accurate summarizing, and focused responding to texts. Drawing on reader-response theories and psycho-linguistic research, Chapter Five provides a variety of activities to promote active reading and critical responding.

New to the fifth edition is an increased focus on both the potential and problems created by the Internet and the World Wide Web. First, four of the eleven new essays deal with Internet-related issues: Cathleen Cleaver writes on censorship and the Internet; Pico Iyer and Amy Saltzman explore how technology is creating a "Global Village" of interconnecting cultures and jobs. Elizabeth Larsen gives us a lesson in surfing the web for museum and arts sites. These essays, combined with five essays new to the previous edition, give students information about the Internet–how to use it, how it affects them, and how it affects writing and learning. Second, an expanded section on locating, evaluating, and documenting Internet and web sources–using the new MLA guidelines–help students use electronic resources in their writing.

In addition, the Annotated Instructor’s Edition of The Prentice Hall Guide to College Writers gives support to teachers with English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) students in their classes. All major chapters contain ESL teaching tips, designed to alert teachers to possible ESL problems and their solutions. The accompanying teacher’s manual, Teaching Composition with the Prentice Hall Guide, has two new essays on teaching ESL students in the native speaker classroom.

Finally, the fifth edition contains thirteen new professional and student essays by writers such as Pico Iyer, Susan Douglas, Peter Travers, Wanda Coleman, Michael Maren, Susan Estrich, and Cathleen Cleaver. The additional essays help create thematic clusters of topics that reappear throughout the text: Race and Cultural Diversity, Gender Roles, Technology and the Internet, Environmental Issues, Education, Literacy and Language, Advertising and the Media, and Dependency and Dysfunction. See the Thematic Contents (following the table of contents) for a complete listing.

Of course, The Prentice Hall Guide for College Writers continues to showcase student writing, featuring the work of more than forty student writers from several colleges and universities. The fifth edition contains twenty-three full-length student essays and ten essays with sample prewriting materials and drafts.

Key Features

Continuing in the fifth edition of The Prentice Hall Guide for College Writers is a wide range of noteworthy features:

Logical Sequence of Purpose-Based Chapters Aims and purposes, not rhetorical strategies, guide each writing assignment. Early chapters focus on invention strategies (observing, remembering, reading, and investigation), while later chapters emphasize exposition and argumentation (explaining, evaluating, problem solving, and arguing).

Focus on Writing Processes Every major chapter contains professional and student samples, rhetorical techniques, journal exercises, reading and writing activities, collaborative activities, peer-response guidelines, and revision suggestions designed to assist students with their work-in-progress.

Journal Writing Throughout the text, write-to-learn activities help writers improve their critical reading skills, warm up for each assignment, and practice a variety of invention and shaping strategies.

Marginal Quotations Nearly a hundred short quotations by composition teachers, researchers, essayists, novelists, and poets personalize for the inexperienced writer a larger community of writers still struggling with the same problems that each student faces.

An Introduction to Myths and Rituals for Writing Chapter One, "Writing Myths and Rituals," discounts some common myths about college writing courses, introduces the notion of writing rituals, and outlines the variety of journal writing used throughout the text. Rituals are crucial for all writers but especially so for novice writers. Effective rituals are simply those behavioral strategies that complement the cognitive and social strategies of the writing process. Illustrating a variety of possible writing rituals are quotations from a dozen professional writers on the nature of writing. These short quotations continue throughout the book, reminding students that writing is not some magical process, but rather a madness that has a method to it, a love that is built from labor, and a learning that is born of reading, thinking, observing, remembering, discussing, and writing.

An Orientation to Rhetorical Situation and to Writing Processes Chapter Two, "Purposes and Processes for Writing," bases the writing process in the rhetorical situation (writer, subject, purpose, text, and audience). It restores the writer’s intent or purpose (rather than a thesis sentence or a rhetorical strategy) as the driving force during the writing process. It demonstrates how meaning evolves from a variety of recursive, multidimensional, and hierarchical activities that we call the writing process. Finally, it reassures students that, because individual writing and learning styles differ, they will be encouraged to discover and articulate their own processes from a range of appropriate possibilities.

Aims and Purposes for Writing The text then turns to specific purposes and assignments for writing. Chapters Three through Six ("Observing," "Remembering," "Reading," and "Investigating") focus on invention strategies. These chapters illustrate how writing to learn is a natural part of learning to write. To promote reading, writing, discussing, revising, and learning, these chapters introduce four sources of invention–observing people, places, events, and objects; remembering people, places, and events; reading and responding to texts; and investigating information through interviews, surveys, and written sources. Although students write essays intended for a variety of audiences in each of these chapters, the emphasis is on invention strategies and on writer-based purposes for writing. Although this text includes expressive and transactional elements in every assignment, the direction of the overall sequence of assignments is from the more personal forms of discourse to the more public forms.

Chapters Seven through Ten ("Explaining," "Evaluating," "Problem Solving," and "Arguing") emphasize subject and audience-based purposes. The sequence in these chapters moves the student smoothly from exposition to argumentation (acknowledging the obvious overlapping), building on the skills and strategies of the previous chapters. The teacher may, in fact, use Chapters Seven through Ten as a minicourse in argument, teaching students how to develop and argue claims of fact, claims of cause and effect, claims about values, and claims about solutions or policies.

Responding to Literature Chapter Eleven guides students through the process of writing interpretive essays about short fiction, using many of the critical reading strategies, invention techniques, and shaping strategies practiced in the earlier chapters. This chapter contains three short fiction works and two student essays.

Research Paper Chapter Twelve ("Writing a Research Paper") draws on all the cognitive and social strategies presented in the first eleven chapters. Research papers are written for specific purposes and audiences, too, but the invention, composing, and revising processes are more extended. This chapter helps students select and plan their projects, use the library, find Internet sources, evaluate and document electronic and print sources, record their progress, and test ideas in research logs–learning all the while to integrate the information they gather with their own experiences and ideas.

Handbook A brief handbook includes a review of basic sentence elements, sentence structure and grammar, diction and style, and punctuation and mechanics.

Supplementary Material for Instructors

and Students

Annotated Instructor’s Edition (AIE) In the margins of the Annotated Instructor’s Edition are hundreds of teaching tips and suggestions for assignments and group activities. (0-13-022547-9)

Designed to accompany the Annotated Instructor’s Edition, Teaching Composition with the Prentice Hall Guide contains sections on composition theory, policy statements, lesson plans, collaborative writing, writing in a computer classroom, teaching ESL writers, small-group learning, write-to-learn exercises, reading/writing exercises, prereading journal assignments, writing assignments, suggestions for student conferences, and ideas for responding to and evaluating writing. Also included are chapter commentaries and answers to discussion questions. (0-13-023020-0)

Available for a nominal fee, the Critical Thinking Skills Journal provides students with additional exercises and freewriting activities, as well as opportunities to consider and respond to opposing viewpoints. (0-13-086183-9)

Unique FREE Online Study Resource . . . the Companion WebsiteTM www.prenhall.com/reid Prentice Hall’s exclusive Companion WebsiteTM that accompanies The Prentice Hall Guide for College Writers, fifth edition, offers unique tools and support that make it easy for students and instructors to integrate this online study guide with the text. The site is a comprehensive resource that is organized according to the chapters within the text and features a variety of learning and teaching modules.

For students:

• Study Guide Modules contain a variety of exercises and features designed to help with self-study.

• Reference Modules contain Web Destinations and Net Search options that provide the opportunity to quickly reach information on the web that relates to the content in the text.

• Communication Modules include tools such as Live Chat and Message Boards to facilitate online collaboration and communication.

• Personalization Modules include our enhanced Help feature that contains a test page for browsers and plug-ins.

For instructors:

• Syllabus ManagerTM tool provides an easy-to-follow process for creating, posting, and revising a syllabus online that is accessible from any point within the companion website. This resource allows instructors and students to communicate both inside and outside of the classroom at the click of a button.

The Companion WebsiteTM makes integrating the Internet into your course exciting and easy. Join us online at the address on p. xxii and enter a new world of teaching and learning possibilities and opportunities.

Web CT course for The Prentice Hall Guide for College Writers, Fifth Edition This complete online course includes all of the functionality and content from the companion website along with additional material for students and instructors. The site includes audio and video reinforcement for key concepts, lecture notes, self-check quizzes, additional writing models, bulletin board/chat topics, and more. The Web CT course is available at a discount price when you adopt the Reid text.

Also Available from Prentice Hall

• English on the Internet: A Prentice Hall Guide 1999—2000. Helps students navigate the journey through cyberspace. Free when packaged with this book. ISBN: 0-13-022073-6

Also Available to Qualified Adopters: Prentice Hall Resources for Composition

• ABC News/Prentice Hall Video Library: Composition, Volume 2

0-13-149030-3

• Computers and Writing, by Dawn Rodrigues, University of Texas at Brownsville. 0-13-084034-3

• The Prentice Hall Critical Thinking Audio Study Cassette

0-13-678335-X

• The Prentice Hall/New York Times Themes of the Times Program

0-13-690181-6

• The Prentice Hall/Simon & Schuster Transparencies for Writers

0-13-703209-9

• "Profiles of a Writer" Video Series

• Model Student Essays

0-13-645516-6

• Classroom Strategies, by Wendy Bishop, Florida State University.

0-13-572355-8

• Portfolios, by Pat Belanoff, State University of New York, Stony Brook.

0-13-572322-1

• Journals, by Christopher C. Burnham, New Mexico State University.

0-13-572348-5

• Collaborative Learning, by Harvey Kail, University of Maine, and John Trimbur, Worcester Polytechnic Institite. 0-13-572371-X

• English as a Second Language, by Ruth Spack, Tufts University.

0-13-572389-2

• Writing Across the Curriculum, second edition by Art Young, Clemson University. 0-13-081650-7

• Distance Education, by W. Dees Stallings, University of Maryland, University College. 0-13-572314-0

Special Offers

• Webster’s Dictionary offers. Either of the following may be packaged at a discounted rate with this text.

–Webster’s New WorldTM Dictionary, Third College Edition. Contains more than 11,000 American words and over 17,000 entries.

–Webster’s New WorldTM Compact School and Office Dictionary, Third College Edition. Contains over 56,000 entries and assistance in pronunciation and spelling.

• Writer’s Helper, Version 4.0 (Microsoft® Windows and Macintosh®)

Based on the notion that software tools can be attributed to imaginative and well-organized writing, Writer’s Helper offers a collection of unique 19 pre-writing activities and 18 revising tools to help students through the writing process. Available for $10 when packaged with this text.