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Essay Writing for Canadian Students, 9th edition

Published by Pearson Canada (January 7, 2019) © 2020

  • Roger Davis Red Deer Polytechnic
  • Laura K. Davis Red Deer Polytechnic

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For courses in English composition.

In writing Essay Writing for Canadian Students, our primary goal was to create a resource for Canadian students that offers a fresh and unique approach to essay writing: one that is clear, concise, accessible, and inclusive. In this way, we sought to create an indispensable tool for students from diverse academic backgrounds. We believe that essay writing is a skill you can learn, rather than an inert talent. With this idea in mind, we are convinced that our systematic method - one that explains the stages and steps of the essay writing process - will work for most writers. If you are trying to figure out how to cope with essay assignments in your college or university courses, you are the student we had in mind when we wrote this book.

We present the writing process as a systematic set of procedures for planning, drafting, and revising deductively organized academic essays. Our text aims to demystify the essay writing process and empower every student to cultivate their writing skills. As educators, we have found that students sometimes struggle with thinking about the content of the assignment. For this reason, we stress the analytical skills that help students explore the subjects they write about more completely. We believe there is value in an approach that encourages critical thinking, and that creativity can be incorporated into structured writing of any kind.

Hallmark features of this title

  • Analytical Skills. We present the writing process as a systematic set of procedures for planning, drafting, and revising deductively organized academic essays. Like most teachers, we have found that many weaknesses in student writing stem from confused thinking about the assignment, the subject of the essay, or both.
  • We present a systematic approach to writing essays. Because we believe that writing is a skill you can learn, rather than a talent you are born with, we are convinced this method will work for most writers. Feel free to adapt it to suit your needs.

New and updated features of this title

  • As the world shifts to a greater reliance on digital media, it is appropriate that this resource evolves as well. This ninth edition is the first fully digital version of Essay Writing for Canadian Students. Instructors and students will find that, although the medium has changed, the content is fully consistent with prior editions.
  • This new edition has been thoroughly updated and revised. Key revisions to the content include the following:
    • Grammar Practice in Revel. These modules include key grammar topics linked to brief practice assessments. Assigning these modules will enable you to level-set students' grammar knowledge before they come to class so that you can focus on other key concepts for essay writing.
    • The new Sample Analysis Essay and Persuasive Essay show the results of the processes of gathering material, drafting, and revising covered in Chapters 3, 4, 5, and 9.
    • Updated and improved the discussion of writing analysis essays (Chapters 3, 4, and 5), and introduced a new example text for discussion, Maggie Helwig's “Hunger.” This new essay and the sample student essay on it address timely and important issues, such as anorexia nervosa and consumer capitalism.

Digital Assets in Revel

  • Shared Multimedia Assignments make it easy for students and instructors to post and respond to videos and other media. Students can also record and upload their own presentations for grading, comments or peer review.
  • Embedded assessments afford students regular opportunities to check their understanding. The results enable instructors to gauge student comprehension and provide timely feedback to address learning gaps along the way.
  • Writing assignments - such as journaling prompts and shared writing activities - enable educators to foster and assess critical thinking without significantly impacting their grading burden.
  • The educator dashboard offers an at-a-glance look at overall class performance. It helps instructors identify and contact struggling and low-activity students, ensuring that the class stays on pace.

Part l Rhetoric

  1. Writing Essays: An Overview
  2. Reading Analytically and Writing Summaries
  3. Writing Analysis Essays: Clarifying Essay Topics and Gathering Material
  4. Writing Analysis Essays: Formulating a Thesis Statement and Drafting
  5. Writing Analysis Essays: Revising
  6. Writing Essays on Literature
  7. Writing Comparison Essays
  8. Writing Evaluation Essays
  9. Writing Persuasive Essays
  10. Gathering Material for Research Essays
  11. Writing Research Essays
  12. Writing Research Essays across the Curriculum

Part ll Readings

  1. Published Writings
  2. Abdou, Angie. “Summer Hockey Camp: What's Love Gotta Do with It?” (new)
  3. Alexander, Bruce K. “Reframing Canada's Drug Problem"
  4. Bringhurst, Robert. “The Persistence of Poetry and the Destruction of the World”
  5. Fisher, Mark. “Good for Nothing” (new)
  6. Forster, E. M. “My Wood”
  7. Gillespie, Curtis. “Learning to Unlearn: It's Time to Discard the Myths about Canada and Indigenous Peoples” (new)
  8. Helwig, Maggie. “Hunger” (new)
  9. Hooks, bell. “Feminist Politics: Where We Stand”
  10. King, Thomas. “Forget Columbus” (new)
  11. Klein, Naomi. “Science Says: Revolt!”
  12. Laurence, Margaret. “The Loons”
  13. Laurence, Margaret. “Time and the Narrative Voice”
  14. Mate, Gabor. “Embraced by the Needle”
  15. Morrison, Aimee. “Facebook and Coaxed Affordances”
  16. Orwell, George. “Shooting an Elephant”
  17. Robinson, Laura. “Girl Unprotected”
  18. Sanders,Scott Russell. “The Men We Carry in Our Minds”
  19. Satir, Virginia. “Systems: Open or Closed?”
  20. Stenson, Fred. “In Search of a Modest Proposal”
  21. Suzuki, David. “It Always Costs”
  22. Swift, Jonathan. “A Modest Proposal”
  23. Taylor, Charles. “All for One, and One for All”
  24. Van Camp, Richard. “Canada, You're like My Favourite One-Day Uncle” (new)
  25. Vonnegut, Kurt. “How to Write with Style” (new)
  26. Vowel, Chelsea. “What is Cultural Appropriation? Respecting Cultural Boundaries” (new)
  27. Woolf, Virginia. “[Shakespeare's Sister]”

Sample Essays

  1. Jones, C. “Perspectives on Addictions”
  2. Jones, D. “The Complexity of Power and Gender Relations: An Evaluative Essay on Scott Russell
  3. Sanders's ‘The Men We Carry in Our Minds'”
  4. Jones, V. “Acting Now: Practical Approaches to Mitigating Climate Change” (new)
  5. Smith, F. “Laurence's ‘The Loons': Insight or Stereotype?”
  6. Smith, L. “Like Me on Facebook: Identity Construction in Social Media”
  7. Smith, T. “Bodily Voices: Maggie Helwig's ‘Hunger'” (new)
  8. Strong, L. “Tone in William Carlos William's ‘This is Just to Say'”

Part lll Handbook for Final Editing

  1. Final Editing: The Process
  2. Grammar: Parts of Speech
  3. Writing Better Sentences
  4. Writing Better Paragraphs
  5. Creating an Appropriate Tone
  6. Punctuation
  7. Spelling and Mechanics
  8. Format

Laura K. Davis is a faculty member at Red Deer Polytechnic, where she teaches literature and writing. She holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Alberta, an M.A. in English from the University of Victoria, and a B.A. in English from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. She specializes in Canadian Literature and Writing Studies. Her publications include Margaret Laurence and Jack McClelland, Letters, edited with Linda M. Morra and published by the University of Alberta Press in 2018, and Margaret Laurence Writes Africa and Canada, published by Wilfrid Laurier University Press in 2017.

Roger Davis is a faculty member at Red Deer Polytechnic, where he teaches courses in literature and writing. His research and publication interests include cannibalism, dystopian literature, poetry and poetics, and academic integrity.

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