Guide to College Writing, A, MLA Update Edition

This version of A Guide to Writing in College has been updated to reflect the 8th Edition of the MLA Handbook (April 2016)*

Helps students navigate the challenges of writing in all college-level courses

A Guide to College Writing is both an excellent introduction to college writing for composition courses that emphasize writing across the curriculum (WAC) and a writing guide for use in any college course. Scholar and former CWPA president Chris Anson brings his research on and knowledge of WAC, threshold concepts, and transference to this first-year writing text.

Anson offers a refreshing new choice to faculty seeking support in teaching the features and forms of other disciplines. The text does not teach any one form, but rather how to observe, analyze, and reproduce the forms and intellectual strategies of whatever the students might be asked to read and write. Students are walked through the writing process, beginning with shorter, lower-stakes “microtheme” assignments and scaffolding toward longer, sustained formal projects typical of their discipline. Throughout, students learn how to use writing as a learning tool.

* The 8th Edition introduces sweeping changes to the philosophy and details of MLA works cited entries. Responding to the “increasing mobility of texts,” MLA now encourages writers to focus on the process of crafting the citation, beginning with the same questions for any source. These changes, then, align with current best practices in the teaching of writing which privilege inquiry and critical thinking over rote recall and rule-following.