Description
As college teachers, we have an important mission. We prepare students to write for different purposes and for different audiences. We show students how to read critically and write effectively, preparing them to join ongoing research conversations as contributors (not just consumers) of ideas. In college, students learn to write, and they learn through writing. Effective writing is fundamental to academic success — across the disciplines.
When you adopt Rules for Writers for your students, you send an important message: Writing is worth studying and learning. And you give students the resource to answer their questions and to learn from the answers. College writing is high stakes: Students learn to become nurses and teachers, biologists and criminal justice professionals through writing. Th ey might focus on psychology or economics, but they’ll most likely write in each college class they take. Rules for Writers is the one text that students will need for all their college work.
When students have a trusted handbook to answer their writing questions, they become more confident writers. Confident college writers are more flexible learners; they’re more willing to try new approaches, and they feel comfortable thinking critically. I recently surveyed 700 first-year writers about the relationship between handbook use and writer confidence. When students were asked about this relationship, 79% of survey participants, many of whom use Rules for Writers, reported that using a handbook made them more confident academic writers. Students reported that using Rules for Writers helped them become more efficient and effective writers than if they had simply searched the Internet for answers to their questions about comma usage, for example, or about citing and documenting sources. A Google search might call up 46 million results to their question about comma usage, but these results are oft en more confusing than illuminating, and never as straightforward and authoritative as the confidence-building instruction they receive from relying on Rules for Writers.
Each new feature in the eighth edition is designed to answer students’ writing questions and address specific problems students face as college writers. And each new feature of Rules for Writers is designed to support your teaching with the handbook. One such feature is an emphasis on the relationship between reading critically and writing effectively. Th e eighth edition shows students how to read carefully to understand an author’s ideas, how to read with skepticism to question those ideas, and how to present their own ideas in response. Th e entire academic writing section is focused on the important reading and writing relationship, because the more students learn to take from their reading, the more they have to give as writers.
My goal in revising Rules for Writers was to create an even more useful classroom resource to save you time and increase students’ learning. The eighth edition is informed by teachers and students who use it and who helped me look squarely at the writing problems students face and the practical solutions they need to become confident academic writers. You’ll find new instruction on effective peer review, successful paraphrasing, accurate citation of online sources, and meaningful research — turning topics into questions; finding entry points in debates; and evaluating, integrating, and citing sources. And you’ll find step-bystep writing guides to help students write common assignments, such as an annotated bibliography.
Teaching with Rules for Writers has become easier than ever. The eighth edition is now available with LaunchPad Solo for Rules for Writers — an online product with assignable exercises, sample student writing, and other resources. I’ve included “Writing Practice” prompts to help students apply handbook advice to their own draft s and to off er practice with core academic skills — thesis statements, research questions, peer review, and more. You and your students will also find videos; practice exercises for grammar, style, and citation; and LearningCurve, gamelike adaptive quizzing.
As the author of Rules for Writers, I bring to this handbook the belief that writing is worth studying and learning — that all students who use this book will learn to read deeply and write clearly, that they will find in their reading ideas they care about, and that they will write about these ideas with care and depth. I am eager to share this handbook with you, knowing that in the eighth edition you’ll find everything you and your students trust and value about Rules for Writers.