Joe's Textbook Review

Joe’s Textbook Reviews

I. Rosenwasser, David and Jill Stephen. Writing Analytically, 4th Edition. Boston: Thomson Wadsworth, 2006.

Overall, this is a good practical text. Most of what it describes/prescribes agrees with my ideas on writing, critical reading, analysis; its ideas are generally memorable and easy to apply to a variety of texts. The book includes examples of analysis of visual arguments (paintings), poems, movies, history texts, etc. Other topics of writing samples include sports issues and gender inequality; example papers include literary analysis, research analysis, and scientific writing.

The basic elements used by the text (especially its analysis method) are repeated throughout the book; generally there’s a sense of things carrying over, of chapters building on each other, of continued relevance of what you learned earlier. I like this self-reinforcing; for someone learning concepts, repetition is good. The book is structured loosely enough so that one could use the chapters out of order and not suffer unduly; terms are often briefly redefined for the reader. The general applicability of the content would probably allow it to fit with most course designs and paper topics, and it’s short enough that you could use most or all of the text without much problem. I especially admire its focus on analyzing and writing before acquiring a thesis, and letting the thesis grow from what’s learned in early stages of analysis and writing.

Contents: Seeing better: the analytical habit of mind
What is analysis and how does it work?
Putting analysis to work Reading: how to do it and what to do with it
Linking evidence and claims
Making a thesis evolve
Recognizing and fixing weak thesis statements
Introductions and conclusions
Organizations
Style: choosing words
Style: shaping sentences and cutting the fat
Writing the researched paper
Finding and citing sources (includes electronic research)
Nine basic writing errors and how to fix them

Chapter Format:
Quick Take: a preview of major elements from the chapter; some good summary language here. Within each chapter (with one exception) are 2-4 major elements; within each element are several subheadings. Usually there are 4-5 “Try This” sections sprinkled throughout to illustrate and provide practice for the concepts; some of these would work well as in-class activities, and some are more appropriate as homework assignments. There’s usually at least one “assignment” which could be used either as a short, preparatory writing, an element in a paper assignment, or a paper assignment in its own right. The chapter concludes with a “Guidelines” section marked off in green, recapitulating the key points of each section. The highlight boxes, sidebars, and frequent bullet-point outlining make it easy to follow and (comparatively) visually interesting.

Highlights: key points offset in grey; recap of central points at end of chapter; good sample writing in the text; numerous and generally useful “Try This” examples, suggesting practical applications of chapter concepts. Some are best suited for homework, and some work very well in class. “Voices Across the Curriculum” sidebars contain valuable information from non-English professors regarding what they look for in writing. Chapter 8 (Introductions and Conclusions) seems especially useful and practical, as is most of the material on critical analysis, which is very practical and memorable.

Problems: occasionally the language is a little dry, though it’s usually straightforward and memorable; considering the amount of good content, the instructor would probably need to help students prioritize their reading. Some chapters seem a bit large to address in a single 50-minute class, especially if you use the “Try This” sections. To get the most out of the book, you’d need to spend a lot of time on it, but I think it would be very useful to students who aren’t used to analytic writing. The book does not include citation style, though it does include a chapter on common writing errors; if you can find a citation style guide online, you may not need a separate style manual. Sections on argument itself seem rushed and less easy to acquire.

There’s also a version with readings: more fully formed examples of arguments than are presented in the main text.

Price: $45.95, more expensive than I remembered. There are a number of 1000 instructors who use this text, so there should be used copies around for students. Its usefulness for other writing fields makes it more of a keeper for students than Everything’s an Argument. 384 pages.

II. Lunsford, Andrea, John J. Ruskiewicz, Keith Walters. Everything’s an Argument with Readings. Boston: Bedford St. Martin’s, 2007.

It’s forward thinking, though maybe not as much as Compose Design Advocate. From my non-hardcore rhet-comp perspective, it looks like a good book for a hardcore rhet-comper.

Includes basic elements of argument (pathos, ethos, logos),
How to write arguments (Toulmin-style, fact, definition, evaluation, causal, proposal),
Style and presentation (writing style, use of humor, visual argument, multimedia and web presentation),
Conventions (evidence, fallacies, intellectual property and plagiarism, use of sources, documentation using MLA and APA style).

The last 400-odd pages contain samples of arguments (visual included) on different topics: body image, ethnic/cultural stereotypes, controversies in sports, bilingual culture and education in the U.S., language and identity, religion and public life, diversity in higher education, how Americans are perceived abroad.
Recurring “Not Just Words” section in each chapter highlights visual argument. Another recurring sidebar is called “If Everything’s an Argument...” and invites students to question the book itself.

Highlights: packed with visual argument, including some very striking, even disturbing images. Content is very timely. I think the book will definitely force students to think outside of their assumptions, and will encourage them to see everything as an argument. The book includes MLA and APA citation style.

Problems: it’s over 1000 pages long. Effort to stay very timely may mean frequent revision of the text. It’s very complete, so it might be difficult to get to everything with additional paper assignments; if you use this book, you’d probably want to structure the entire course around it, especially the version with readings. The sheer amount of content verges on overwhelming. The textual material itself is presented in a straightforward manner and is understandable, though the visual presentation of the text isn’t as easy to follow as Writing Analytically. The book doesn’t really include any nuts-and-bolts stuff; no treatment of introductions or conclusions, for example. Also there’s a lot of white space, though some of you may like that.

Price: $61.95 with readings
Online support: Instructor’s Notes (to print out), Course Management Solutions (online) – suggests for class plans, etc. Packages: can also get i-Cite, a CD-ROM on citing new media texts, evaluating visual sources including TV, websites. The CD also includes tutorials, exercises on evaluating and incorporating sources from new media.

Another Textbook Review

I think I forgot to post it before. Better late...

The College Writer. A Guide to Thinking, Writing, and Researching, 2/e, 2007 VanderMey, Verne Meyer, John Van Rys, Patrick Sebranek

The textbook has colorful design, which makes easier looking for the different sections in it. It offers a good step-by-step approach to writing based on close reading and analysis of essays. There is a good choice of essays wrote by the authors of ficition, journalisis and students on the different controversial topics such as gender, environment, language, health etc. The chapter called “One Writer’s Process” is very detailed in showing the process of brainstorming, drafting, revision and proofreading, which is very helpful for a student. The textbook has a chapter dedicated to conducting Internet research. It also touches the topic of visual argument in the introduction though, in general, does not go beyond the methods of textual rhetoric.

The weaknesses I see are the confusing grammar reference and too many hyperlinks inside the book. On some pages, there is too much color and the valuable information is not on the brightest part of the page.

The Confident Writer, by Carol C. Canar. 3/e 2006.

This textbook also has an approach of step-by-step following through all the stages of a writing process. Much attention is given to the basics of critical thinking and different strategies of starting he paper (brainstorming, freewriting etc.) The latter one is very helpful because to start an essay is sometimes the most difficult thing to do. The book has clear explanations, and each chapter is based on the analysis of an essay or an article. These materials are quite interesting, and many of them are dedicated to the different kinds of intercultural experience. The handbook is very detailed though it contains some theoretical information that seems to be unnecessary for the mechanics of writing. I also see the disadvantages of The Confident Writer in its lack of attention to any kind of visual rhetoric or new technologies. It is a very traditional approach, and a student may be bored with it.

Writing instruction

Since you guys heard me complain about the lack of writing instruction in Everything's an Argument, I thought I would would you know that I think I have found a nice supplement for text. Bedford offers a really small, cheap book that focuses on writing and revising, cleverly entitled, you guessed it, Writing and Revising. The latter text retails for $16 new on Amazon and runs as cheap as $3.50 used. New, from the bookstore, the combination of the two texts should be less than $50 all told. And, let's not forget, these books are small. Yay small books.

Just thought you might want to know.

--Bri

The Messy, Glorious Hairball of the Real World

I saw this blurb for a new book on BoingBoing, and it struck me as somehow relevant to our class. It seems to me that part of the reason so many instructors are wary of technological innovation may be tied to the anxiety of hierarchy. This book (from the blurb at least) seems to suggest that the internet is radically anti-hierarchical (definitely true), which would seem to put it at odds with the traditional structure of academia. Perhaps what we are experiencing when we deal with this anxiety is a kind of "betweenness" (to drop some Heidegger) -- a sense that we are historically between two epistemological frameworks. I think our era may be comparable to the Copernican and Einsteinian epistemological shifts. The internet is teaching us how to know the world differently. But we don't quite understand all that this "new knowing" entails yet. Thus, the anxiety. At least, that's my take. Here's the blurb:

David Weinberger's "Everything is Miscellaneous" is the kind of book that binds together innumerable miscellaneous threads and makes something new, coherent, and incontrovertible out of them. Weinberger's thesis is this: historically, we've divided the world into categories, topics, and hierarchies because physical objects need to be in one place or another, they can't be in all the places they might belong. Computers and the Internet turn this on its head: because a computer can "put things" in as many categories as they need to be in, because individuals can classify knowledge, tasks, and objects idiosyncratically, the hierarchy is revealed for what it always was, a convenient expedient masquerading as the True Shape of the Universe.

It's a powerful idea: from org charts to science, from music to retail theory, from government to education, every field of human endeavor is tinged with hierarchy, and every hierarchy is under assault from the Internet. One impact of this change is that it reveals the biases lurking underneath the editorial carvery of our systems. From the Dewey Decimal system's laughable clunkers (mentalist bunkum gets its own category, but Islam has to share a decimal with a couple competing "Eastern" faiths) to the Britannica's paring away at "old" biographies to make way for the new, Weinberger makes a compelling case for a new kind of knowledge that more faithfully represents the messy, glorious hairball of the real world.

A Hill of Beans

Sorry for the late post. I agree with most of the comments on the helpful advice of Bean and Curzan and Damour. I think both books will be helpful to revisit from time to time. Something that interested me was Bean's comments on individual conferences, which I think can be tricky and, if done incorrectly can look as if the instructor is just wasting time. I also think they can be incredibly valuable, especially in explaining some of the comments you've written on their papers. Sometimes the notes we give on essays, no matter how clearly expressed we think they are, are not completely understood by the student, and a conference can help to further explain these notes. In the past, I've looked at conferences as an opportunity for the student to show up and have these notes explained to them, and I think there is a certain value to that. However, looking back on it, I realize I wasn't expecting anything from them other than to show up, and receive my pearls of wisdom. I think that a better approach would be for the student to come in with questions, for them to be bringing something to the table, so that they come in already thinking about their essay. I think that the approach I was using made it to where they probably were not thinking about the paper much until the moment they sat down with me. I also like the idea of distinguishing between higher and lower order concerns, and making clear before the conference, in an address to the entire class, that the conference will focus only on higher order concerns.

This blog is full of Beans!

Like most of you who have blogged so far (even though the syllabus says we don't have to...I'm a fool for peer pressure), I like the idea of front-loading the course. What's more, I think it makes a huge deal of sense for English 1000 with its emphasis on process. Presumably our students are going to develop better writing skills as the semester progresses, so if we force them (yes, Claire, I also like the compulsion factor) to do tough work early on, they will get into the habit of a rigorous work ethic. I remember that one of the most horrifying days of my undergrad career was the first day in a Shakespeare course when the professor expected us to explicate a sonnet and to explain the linguistic roots of Elizabethan English vocabulary words. The second day, half of the class was gone. I stuck it out and today I am an official English Dork. (But to be fair, those people who dropped the class probably took another one that lead them to gainful employment. My bad.)

Maybe cracking down in the first few weeks wouldn't do the trick, but I'm pretty sure if we all demand a lot from our students (C&D's concept of assigning responsibility), they will put in the work. Nothing motivates a kid like realizing that s/he can't just slide by in a class scraping together extra credit points. Honestly though... how many students in the WL have we seen that don't care about their classes because the instructors expect them to do *all* the work without explaining how or why to do it? If the concepts and significance of a topic are explained, the students will be interested. If the concepts are entirely abstract, grounded in "literature of a past generation," and don't seem applicable to the students' lives, forget it.

So I guess this gets at Bean's point of designing good assignments. Well, duh. But that's a lot easier said than done, darling Bean. And obviously all the strategies I'm expounding on here (or at least trying to) are very idealistic and seem like common sense. Maybe it's just that I'd rather be thinking about anything other than seminar papers right now, but I'm feeling particularly excited about where my class is going to go. And I want to talk about it and listen to what everybody else is doing (um, *hello*, syllabus parties!).

Or maybe it's all the caffeine giving me heart arrhythmia.

Blogging in the Bean Fields

As I blog about Bean for the last time this semester I can't help shedding a small tear. When will I ever find a name better than Bean?

As always, I appreciate the good advice we can always count on from Bean. Like Tim, I'm into the discovery draft idea as an early submission during the writing process (221). It seems like such a good idea to force students to start thinking as early as possible. This is true for me as well. So far in grad school I've written better papers when I was forced to hand in a draft early in the writing process. Hectic as this was, it makes things so much easier in the long run, I think. I like the idea of concept maps or idea maps instead of outlines. Personally I'm a fan of outlines but they've got such a stigma that it seems best to have alternative planning devices to offer students.

Bean's section on peer review was interesting but not very helpful, I felt. I like the idea of peer reviews but it's troubling that they so often wind up being a waste of time. A friend of mine revised her peer review process when she discovered the usual routine wasn't working. Instead of having students exchange drafts, she has students grade each other's papers anonymously. They have to grade as if they are the instructor and they use her rubric in order to grade papers. She tells me that this results in a much more substantive exchange of comments and suggestions, and it also helps students understand why they get the grades they do. She hands back the student-graded paper at the same time she hands back the copy she herself has graded. Apparently this is working well, and I think I'll try it in my own class.

Random Bean Counting

As Tim says, YES to front-loading. Actually we've done a fair amount in the course so far, but it's all those little details that get you.

I love the idea of students preparing discussion questions; this is a good way to motivate actually reading what they're assigned to read without our having to grade something. I might use the discussion board as part of this.

C&D's suggestion to schedule student assignments around our own is nice, but seems highly impractical unless we wait to make up the full class schedule until _after_ we get syllabi for the classes we're taking. And that would be tricky.

Bean's paired interviews sounds neat for early-process peer review- can help a student see whether they're writing a viable argument. I'm worried about the pairings though- an unmotivated D student may not be very much help to anyone else. I'll still probably try this though.

And I'm big on the idea of discovery drafts, as Jack calls them; I certainly don't want to see a 2-page mess as a 1st submission. For a research paper, a prospectus or abstract (or both) sounds like a good way to keep them on schedule and help them manage research. It definitely worked for me as an undergraduate- helped combat my natural procrastination (my father once bought me a book on fighting procrastination. I haven't read it yet).

While still resisting B&C&D's ideas on abruptly shutting off conferences, I like their ideas on structuring conferences- I think I might adapt their meeting model, and emphasize to students that they need to prepare for conferences too (specific questions etc.).

C&D reassure us that teaching is a process. I like that. I'd like to believe that I'll get better at this, and it will be good to remember that even a lousy class will only last for a semester, and then I'll never have to see them again. Ahhhh.

Balancing the Madness

I think Chapter 10 of Curzan and Damour, as usual, provides some valuable practical advice for surviving the first year of teaching. I plan to use this summer extensively for the "frontloading" that they suggest. I'm going to read and re-read White Noise, immerse myself in The World is a Text, and polish my syllabus and class notes to an uncanny shine. I think I may even try to get a good deal of my handouts copied and filed before the semester ever begins. I feel that if I go into the semester with organized materials and a really clear idea of what I'm trying to do, then I will succeed (in not making a fool of myself, and wasting my students' time).

I also appreciated the fact that Curzan and Damour took the stigma off "sharing the burden." Personally, I plan to use a lot of activities that will shift the focus away from me as awkward spectacle and towards the group as interactive community. And if I can find anyone foolhardy enough to volunteer as a guest speaker, then I guarantee I will take him/her up on it. Diversity is conducive to learning, and, besides, I can guarantee there will be weeks that I just don't want to lecture for an hour straight. Actually, I hope to very rarely (if ever) rely on the traditional, marathon-lecture format for my classes. Such a structure seems both overly taxing and likely to induce rampant snoring.

Book Reviews

Brief Book Reviews

#1 Between Worlds, A Reader, Rhetoric, and Handbook. Pearson Longman. Susan Bachmann and Melinda Barth. 2007. Fifth edition. 626 pages. $66.00.


This is a promising textbook that might actually work well in the classroom for me. I have been looking for a text that would allow the students to explore the themes related to cross-cultural/intercultural communication. I wanted to use this topic area as a frame to explore argumentative writing. I think that I would be able to do that with this text in that it offers some specific readings that take up issues involving intercultural communication.

The book is nicely divided – very traditional I suspect – in the following manner:

Part I The Reader

Part II The Rhetoric

Part III The Handbook

There appears to be a substantial amount of cross-referencing going on between all areas of the text which I believe will help to make the book more of a piece to the students. I like the way the reader provides a variety of essays in many different genres in the following categories:

Chapter 1: Between Generations
Chapter 2: Between Genders
Chapter 3: Between Cultures
Chapter 4: Between Perceptions
Chapter 5: Between Values
Chapter 6: Between Screens

Chapter 6 above deals with visual culture – film as text, image as text. This section looks interesting and it looks like it would provide a real material change from the forgoing chapters. The chapters has activities and exercise that deal with six different films.

While this book does pick up and explore some of the topics that I am interested in exploring in the class, I am a little concern that it is really just to much book. It weighs a ton and goes over 600 pages. Do I, do my students, really need such a mighty tome. Physically and visually, I would like to find something a bit more elegant, something along the lines of Bri’s book, Everything Is An Argument.

#2 Frame Work, Culture, Storytelling, and College Writing. Gary Columbo, Bonnie Lisle, Sandra Mano. Bedford Books. Boston. 1997. $56.95

I continue in my adventure of learning what “culture” means in the United States and specifically what it means in English departments. In Japan, they tend think of Cultures as monolithic, i.e. the Japanese culture, the American Culture. When they talk of internationalization, they think of it in terms of learning more about other cultures, learning how to interact with other cultures, learning more about your own culture and what assumptions and values you carry with you – often unknown and un-reflected upon. Cultural anthropologists like Edward Hall speak about the importance of hidden culture – all the stuff below the surface – below our awareness - that informs and shapes much of way we interpret the world – the way we behave in it. Culture of this sort is a deep river baby. OK enough of that..

This book is disappointing, period. So, I really don’t want to say too much about it other than to explain what is disappointing. Culture in this book seems to refer to ethnicity, near as I can tell. I’m not saying that is a bad thing. I think there is a lot of truth to the notion that a classroom of university students brings with it a lot of “cultural” diversity, one hopes. My issue is this, the authors have decided on a “fresh new approach” to writing ( Yeah, like that SOUNDs fresh) and this new approach asks the students to focus on writing narrative stories as a way of developing their writing, and also as a way of social empowerment, I think. Hmm.

Now, I as a guy interested in non-fiction writing, I hope I don’t have a problem with narrative essays. My issue is this, are freshman university students really going to be well served by learning how to write narrative essays instead of argumentative/analytical essays? Apparently, the authors of this text believe so:

“Recent research in anthropology, linguistics, cognitive science, and women’s and ethnic studies suggests that our understanding of the world is mediated by story frames – culturally constructed narrative patterns that filter, organize, and interpret all of our experiences. The concept of the story frame offers a powerful alternative to pedagogies based on personal/academic or narrative/analytic oppositions.”

Well, I dunno, there you go. Maybe we need to dump this academic analytic stuff, especially in light of that “recent research.”

Seriously, I think I follow the argument they are making, and I believe there is something to be said for it. But I am troubled. I am thinking students need to learn “the language of the academy,” in a sense. I know that might sound rough – and I don’t mean to disparage the cultural histories of the students. I am really speaking here about how best we serve them, serve their needs? Don’t they need to develop their argumentive/analytic writing skills to survive in the university and beyond it?

The authors of this text in keeping with their over all purpose and design have included readings primarily from minority writers. “Most of the selections we’ve included are by authors who stand outside the dominant culture, and more than half are by women.” This is not a bad thing. One could easily argue that it is about time such an anthology was used in the class. My concern is with the somewhat implicit message in this i.e. writers outside the dominant culture write in narrative forms. Or, maybe it means that writers outside the dominant culture CAN’T write in academic argumentative form an by implication students outside that dominant form can’t either and therefore we are going to offer this new approach - take it down a notch and teach young writers (who are outside the dominant culture) this empowering narrative way of writing? Am I missing something here?

So you see, I am bothered by the science here and by the presuppositions the authors are making in deliberately privileging the narrative essay over the academic/analytical essay. They are doing all of this in the name of greater cultural sensitivity – diversity.

“Because the idea of cultural diversity lies at the heart of our approach to composition, Frame Work weaves a broad selection of readings into its cultural storytelling approach to college writing.”

What I have been reminded of in looking at textbooks is how political an act it can be to choose any text for class.

In closing, (I wasn’t going to say much about this book) this book bmight work for a different kind of college writing class, but I don’t think it is suitable for a class in argumentative writing. My hunch is that this would be an effective lead-in text to a class like ours.