Writing Analytically [Paperback]

David Rosenwasser (Author), Jill Stephen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 2, 2008 | ISBN-10: 1413033105 | ISBN-13: 978-1413033106 | Edition: 5

The popular, brief rhetoric that treats writing as thinking, WRITING ANALYTICALLY, Fifth Edition, offers a series of prompts that lead you through the process of analysis and synthesis and help you to generate original and well-developed ideas. The book's overall point is that learning to write well means learning to use writing as a way of thinking well. To that end, the strategies of this book describe thinking skills that employ writing. As you will see, this book treats writing as a tool of thought--a means of undertaking sustained acts of inquiry and reflection.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

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About This Edition

From the Publisher

New Features

• New introductory chapter. Chapter 1, "Introduction to This Book, to College Writing, and to Thinking About Thinking," shows users how they can take best advantage of the text and its features. For instance, the chapter includes a series of 15 "Short Takes" that forecast the modular organization of the text and serve as a reference tool for locating extended topical discussions throughout the text.


• New "Toolkit" chapters. The extraordinary Writing Analytically heuristics are now divided into two "Toolkits of Analytical Methods" chapters. The first "Toolkit" chapter (Chapter 2) equips the user with foundational observation techniques, while the second (Chapter 4) provides activities that allow the user to extend and deepen his analysis.


• Revised Chapter 3, "Analysis." This chapter maintains its focus on the "Five Analytical" moves and now also includes discussion of the counterproductive habits of mind that often supplant effective analysis. There is a new example of the application of the "Five Analytical" moves to a Harvard University commencement speech. New "Try This" exercises are included in "Description," "Inferring Implications from Observations," and "Applying the Five Analytical Moves to a Speech." The chapter has new user writing examples from users of Biology, History, and English, and a professional writing from Jane Jacobs' The Death and Life of Great American Cities.


• Newly revised and expanded chapter on reading. Moved forward in the sixth edition, this chapter offers a more developed presentation of "How to Read" with a new "Try This" exercise called "Writing and Reading with Others." New examples of user writing in this chapter include responses to David Bartholomae's "Inventing the University" essay. The reading chapter now has a new section on analyzing an audience and specific application of Uncovering Assumptions and Reformulating Binaries heuristics to Christopher Borick's essay, "On Political Labels." The chapter also has a new "Voices form Across the Curriculum" section on critical reading, from a music Instructor's point of view.


• New Chapter 6, "Interpretation and Argument. Combining the prior edition's chapters on Interpretation and Argument, this single, integrated chapter now illustrates how to make plausible claims and take reasonable positions.


• Expanded discussion of the thesis statement. Newly revised Unit II sequences two chapters on the Thesis Statement so that a user can study what makes a good thesis (Chapter 10) and then study a chapter about how to fix thesis statements (Chapter 11) that could be made more effective. These thesis chapters also contain new examples of user writing.


• Integrated "Voices From Across the Curriculum" sections. These sections are now integrated throughout the text to more clearly illustrate the connections between writing and various academic disciplines.

Additional Features:

• In this book, the authors also show users what not to do, using the premise that users have a hard time developing new skills until they've come to understand what is counterproductive about their current practice.


• This book advocates locating observation as a separate phase of thinking before committing to a thesis. As writers and thinkers, we all need to slow down--to dwell longer in the open-ended, exploratory, information-gathering stage. So, the text supplies tasks for each phase of the writing and idea-generating process: making observations, inferring implications, and making the leap to possible conclusions.


• To make the book's arguments and advice clearer, easier to find, and more clearly incremental, the sixth edition of Writing Analytically is streamlined and organized into three units: (I) The Analytical Frame of Mind; (II) Writing Analytical Papers: How to Use Evidence, Evolve Claims, and Converse with Sources; and (III) Matters of Form: The Shapes that Thought Takes.


• Writing Analytically (Sixth Edition) centers on the concept of writing to learn: the idea that writing can facilitate and enrich users' understanding of their academic courses, and of their lives.

Further reference for this edition:

Download a transition guide [PDF] showing the changes from the fifth to the sixth edition of Writing Analytically.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Review

"The sections on binaries are VERY helpful, since so many of my students think and write in binary opposites. Wonderful examples and writing activities. Also, I LOVE the Method and Notice and Focus."

"I think Chapter 8 is the most useful chapter in WA. I use both the "bad" and "good" examples of an essay to help my students understand what's required of their own work. My students are not acquainted with writing anything other than a "report," so examples of writings that offer an extended analysis of ideas are crucial." --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 353 pages
• Publisher: Wadsworth Publishing; 5 edition (January 2, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1413033105
• ISBN-13: 978-1413033106
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #175,496 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book for freshman comp, February 6, 2004

By 

Ben Thompson (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Writing Analytically (with InfoTrac) (Paperback)

This is one of the few rhetoric's that deals exclusively with how to think and write analytically. It is very methodical and it gives younger students concrete tools that they can use. It helps students break away from boring, static 5-paragraph themes that state the painfully obvious.

I use the book as the only textbook in a college-level Rhetoric and Writing class. The book is honestly a revelation for most of my students, and it improves their writing and thinking exponentially.

The book does suffer from tone problems, and it is occasionally condescending. It does indeed relate to the reader as a teen/novice, but then again that is who the book is for. It is also not the book for those who need help with style, basic clarity or grammar. Writing Analytically is intended for just that: learning the craft of academic analysis.

I highly recommend it for any instructor who is struggling to help their students learn to think critically.

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I had to use this book for AP English..., May 26, 2003

By 

"hbhman" (Tiffin, Ohio) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Writing Analytically (Paperback)

And let me say that it helped me a lot. My writing got better, and, more importantly, my reading comprehension got better. The "try this" exercises bring out the AWESOMENESS in you... as do the end of the chapter exercises. Not buying this book would be a mistake.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars an excellent teaching tool, February 8, 2007

By 

Blind_Fireworks (Washington, DC, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Writing Analytically (Paperback)

I teach composition at a mid-sized Catholic university in the mid-Atlantic region, and this book has improved my students' writing by leaps and bounds in only a month. The topics are ordered in a way that makes more sense than many composition textbooks; Rosenwasser and Stephen start with reading strategies, and only get to the nuts and bolts of writing after laying out the steps for critical analysis. In other words, THINKING comes before WRITING - as it should. The examples drawn from student papers are very helpful, and the "Try This" exercises provide excellent and meaningful practice (my students grumble a bit about having to do all of them, but I can see the results in the vastly improved work that they turn in).