Longman Writer, The: Rhetoric, Reader, and Research Guide, Brief Edition, 10th edition

Dynamic content designed for the way today's students read, think, and learn brings concepts to life

• Integrated within the narrative, interactives and videos empower students to engage with concepts and take an active role in learning. Revel™ uniquely presents media as an intrinsic part of course content, bringing the hallmark features of Pearson's bestselling titles to life. The Revel media interactives have been designed for quick completion, and videos are brief, so students stay focused and on task.

• Located throughout Revel, quizzing affords students opportunities to check their understanding at regular intervals before moving on.

• The Revel mobile app lets students read, practice, and study — anywhere, anytime, on any device. Content is available both online and offline, and the app syncs work across all registered devices automatically, giving students great flexibility to toggle between phone, tablet, and laptop as they move through their day. The app also lets students set assignment notifications to stay on top of all due dates.

• The Revel writing functionality, available in select courses, enables educators to integrate writing — among the best ways to foster and assess critical thinking — into the course without significantly impacting their grading burden. Self-paced Journaling Prompts throughout the narrative encourage students to express their thoughts without breaking stride in their reading. Assignable Shared Writing Activities direct students to share written responses with classmates, fostering peer discussion. Essays integrated directly within Revel allow instructors to assign the precise writing tasks they need for the course.

• Highlighting, note taking, and a glossary let students read and study however they like. Educators can add notes for students, too, including reminders or study tips.

Organization and pedagogical features support and enhance learning

• Six distinct parts keep the material organized and accessible:

• Part I, “The Reading Process,” provides guidance in a three-step process for text and images in which students learn the importance of developing critical reading skills.

• Part II, “The Writing Process,” takes students, step by step, through a multistage composing sequence. Each chapter presents a stage of the writing process.

• Part III, “The Patterns of Development,” covers nine patterns: description, narration, illustration, division-classification, process analysis, comparison-contrast, cause-effect, definition, and argumentation-persuasion. Each chapter contains a detailed explanation of the pattern.

• Part IV, “The Research Essay,” discusses how to locate, evaluate, analyze, synthesize, integrate, and document electronic and print sources for a research paper.

• Part V, “The Literary Essay and Essay Exam,” shows students how to adapt the composing process to fit the requirements of two highly specific writing situations.

• Part VI, “A Concise Handbook,” provides easy-to-grasp explanations of the most troublesome areas of grammar, punctuation, and spelling that students encounter.

• Checklists summarize key concepts and keep students focused on the essentials as they write.

• Diagrams encapsulate the writing process, providing at-a-glance references as students compose their own essays.

• Activities reinforce pivotal skills and involve students in writing from the start, showing them how to take their papers through successive stages in the composing process.

• Annotated student essays clearly illustrate each pattern of development. Commentary following each essay points out the blend of patterns in the paper and identifies both the paper’s strengths and areas that need improvement.

• Prewriting and Revising Activities ask students to generate raw material for an essay, help them to see that the essay may include more than one pattern of development, and allow students to rework and strengthen paragraphs and examine and experiment with rhetorical options.

• Professional selections represent not only a specific pattern of development, but also showcase a variety of subjects, tones, and points of view. Extensive apparatus accompanies each professional selection.

• Biographical notes provide background on every professional author and create an interest in each piece of writing.

• Pre-Reading Journal Entries prime students for each professional selection by encouraging them to explore their thoughts about an issue.

• Questions for Critical Reading help students to interpret each selection, while Questions About the Writer’s Craft ask students to analyze a writer’s use of patterns.

• Writing Assignments ask students to write essays using the same pattern as in the selection, to write essays that include other patterns, and to conduct research.

• End-of-chapter General Assignments, Assignments Using Multimedia, and Assignments with a Specific Purpose, Audience, and Point of View provide open-ended topics for students to explore and applications of rhetorical context to real-world settings.

• Source Samples provide concrete examples of how students can locate all the necessary components of an MLA citation by presenting the actual source and its corresponding citation.

• Marginal icons alert students and instructors to unique elements of this book, including student writing in progress, assignments that are conducive to using the library or Internet, ethical issues and combined patterns of development.

• REVISED! An increased emphasis on academic writing is integrated into the chapters on the writing process (Part II) and throughout the chapters on the patterns of development and the research essay (Parts III–IV), with more professional selections, including MLA and APA in-text references and works cited or reference lists.

• REVISED! The importance of reading and thinking critically is emphasized throughout, beginning in Chapter 1, “Becoming a Critical Reader and Thinker.” Each chapter teaches students how to think critically during the composing process, including tips for thinking critically about the sources they might integrate in their essays.

• REVISED! A revised section on the writing process (Chapters 2–9) clearly illustrates the recursive stages students will move through as they craft an essay. The eight chapters follow a new student essay through the composing process, showing writers what they need to do during each step—from the time they receive the assignment to the day they submit the final draft.

• REVISED! Revised chapters on the research essay incorporate the guidelines in the MLA Handbook, 8th Edition.

• REVISED! A revised, more thorough treatment of plagiarism includes discussion of intentional and unintentional plagiarism and “patchwork writing.”

• REVISED! More complete coverage on writing the research essay includes an annotated bibliography to accompany a new sample student research essay in both MLA and APA formats.

• NEW! All new student essays—twelve in all—cover a range of subjects, from academic (review of a piece of art) to personal (relationships) to political (gender equality). Many of the new student essays are written using third-person point of view, integrated sources, and illustrations including photos, charts, and graphs.

• NEW! New professional selections range from those written by Hillary Rodham Clinton (“Remarks to the United Nations Fourth Conference on Women Plenary Session”) to food columnist and TV personality Mark Bittman (“What Causes Weight Gain”) to Chinese history professor Jeffrey M. Wasserstrom (“A Mickey Mouse Approach to Globalization”).

Superior assignability and tracking tools help educators make sure students are completing their reading and understanding core concepts

• The Revel assignment calendar allows educators to indicate precisely which readings must be completed on which dates. This clear, detailed schedule helps students stay on task by eliminating any ambiguity as to which material will be covered during each class. When they understand exactly what is expected of them, students are better motivated to keep up.

• The Revel performance dashboard empowers educators to monitor class assignment completion as well as individual student achievement. Actionable information, such as points earned on quizzes and tests and time on task, helps educators intersect with their students in meaningful ways. For example, the trending column reveals whether students' grades are improving or declining, helping educators to identify students who might need help to stay on track.

• Integration of Revel and Blackboard Learn™ provides institutions, instructors, and students easy access to their Revel courses. With single sign-on, students can be ready to access the interactive blend of authors' narrative, media, and assessment on their first day. Flexible, on-demand grade synchronization capabilities allow educators to control exactly which Revel grades should be transferred to the Blackboard Gradebook.