The Prentice Hall Reader

This best-selling collection features ten chapters focusing on the classic methods of narration, description, argument, and persuasion. It contains classic and contemporary essays about popular culture, along with advice about how to read analytically, and how to write persuasively and effectively. Each chapter is organized clearly and effectively, enabling the reader to not only understand each essay and but also what the writer was trying to convey. An excellent reference work as well as an interesting and thoughtful collection of essays.

Preface The Prentice Hall Reader is predicated on two premises: that reading plays a vital role in learning how to write and that writing and reading can best be organized around the traditional division of discourse into a number of structural patterns. Such a division is not the only way that the forms of writing can be classified, but it does have several advantages. First, practice in these structural patterns encourages students to organize knowledge and to see the ways in which information can be conveyed. How else does the mind know except by classifying, comparing, defining, or seeking cause and effect relationships? Second, the most common use of these patterns occurs in writing done in academic courses. There students are asked to narrate a chain of events, to describe an artistic style, to classify plant forms, to compare two political systems, to tell how a laboratory experiment was performed, to analyze why famine occurs in Africa, to define a philosophical concept, or to argue for or against building a space station. Learning how to structure papers using these patterns is an exercise that has immediate application in students' other academic work. Finally, because the readings use these patterns as structural devices, they offer an excellent way in which to integrate reading into a writing course. Students can see the patterns at work and learn how to use them to become more effective writers and better, more efficient readers. What Is New in the Eighth Edition? The eighth edition of The Prentice Hall Reader features 60 essays, 17 of which are new, 11 papers written by student writers, and 9 poems or short, short stories that show the organizational strategies at work. New to this edition are 9 selections which allow the students to see how writing and reading complement each other. As in the previous editions, the readings are chosen on the basis of several criteria: how well they demonstrate a particular pattern of organization, appeal to a freshman audience, and promote interesting and appropriate discussion and writing activities. The eighth edition of The Prentice Hall Reader includes a number of new features: + Detailed treatment of the writing process in three opening chapters How to Read an Essay How to Write an Essay How to Revise an Essay + New Writers at Work” which includes two examples of writing–one student and one professional--from the pre-writing stage through drafting and then revision. + New introductions to each of the nine chapters treating the organizational modes subdivided now into prewriting, writing, and revising. Each offers clear and succinct advice on how to write that particular type of paragraph or essay. The introductions anticipate questions, provide answers, include checklists of the major concerns students should have when writing. + New quick-reference checklists for writers in each chapter + New section For Further Study” after each reading that includes activities focusing on grammar and writing, on working together, on seeing other modes at work, on finding connections, and on exploring the Web + New Reading for”–an example of how learning to write in each of the modes or strategies helps you in reading a section that uses that mode or strategy. + New ”Responding to a Visual” and Reading and Writing about Images” in each chapter that invites analysis of and writing about a visual image. + New Visiting the Web” in each chapter that invites students to pursue a Web-based problem and to write about it. + New additional Writing Suggestions” in each chapter. The text includes hundreds of possible writing topics + New Chapter 10 on Combinations at Work,” a mini-anthology of classic essays that show a mixture of strategies at work. + New student research paper on cell phone use + New section explaining and illustrating plagiarism + New Ready Reference” section keyed to instructor's proofreading a