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About This Edition
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From the Publisher
New Features
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* 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 sup
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
cls 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:
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* 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 Cls, 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:
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Download a transition guide [PDF] showing the changes from the
fifth to the sixth edition of Writing Analytically.