Explains academic writing as a clear, step-by-step process that one can use in any college course.

Demystifies academic reading and writing, step by step. From Inquiry to Academic Writing helps students understand academic culture and its ways of reading, thinking, and writing. With a practical and now widely proven step-by-step approach, the text demystifies cross-curricular thinking and writing. An extensive thematic reader brings students into interdisciplinary debates that not only bear on their college careers but also reflect larger cultural issues that they will encounter outside the academy. The fourth edition provides extensive coverage of academic habits and skills (reflection, summarization, synthesis, and visual analysis) and features more than 40% new readings grouped by interdisciplinary themes.--Publisher website.

Evocative Qualitative Inquiry explores academic research that evokes vitality and life. It provides a road map into integrating the personal with professional to engage in intrinsically meaningful forms of inquiry. The book centers on the key considerations of engaging in evocative forms of writing in the academy. It depicts academic inquiry as an embodied process that is captured and understood through rhythm and resonance. It relays how pleasurable, sensory, and rhythmic forms of inquiry can engender a sense of timelessness, expansiveness, growth, and generativity. Evocative Qualitative Inquiry relates the challenges that may arise from following this less trodden academic inquiry path. It conveys the importance of faith and courage in forging one’s own unique and authentic writing voice. The book concludes with an analogy of a poker game to illustrate how all academic writers possess the embodied capacity to write vibrant words that evoke. Finally, each chapter ends with reflection questions and activities to help readers practice the skills of writing evocatively. This book will be a valuable guide for those seeking evocative writing techniques to engage in vibrant forms of academic research. It is primarily written for academics who desire to learn more about creative, poetic, and embodied writing methodologies.

Even students capable of writing excellent essays still find their first major political science research paper an intimidating experience. Crafting the right research question, finding good sources, properly summarizing them, operationalizing concepts and designing good tests for their hypotheses, presenting and analyzing quantitative as well as qualitative data are all tough-going without a great deal of guidance and encouragement. Writing a Research Paper in Political Science breaks down the research paper into its constituent parts and shows students what they need to do at each stage to successfully complete each component until the paper is finished. Practical summaries, recipes for success, worksheets, exercises, and a series of handy checklists make this a must-have supplement for any writing-intensive political science course.

THIS TITLE HAS BEEN UPDATED TO REFLECT THE 2016 MLA UPDATES! Our editorial team has updated this text based on content from The MLA Handbook, 8th Edition. Browse our catalog or contact your representative for a full listing of updated titles and packages, or to request a custom ISBN. First-year college students are challenged by academic culture and its ways of reading, thinking, and writing that are new to them.Composition instructors are equally challenged by having to introduce, explain, and justify academic methods and conventions to students. From Inquiry to Academic Writing aids both students and teachers with a practical and now widely proven step-by-step approach that effectively demystifies cross-curricular thinking and writing.

Guiding students through the research process and helping them build the skills they need for effective research, Academic Research and Writing: Inquiry and Argument in College presents a highly accessible look at the complex issues that typically come up in reading and constructing research projects. Academic Research and Writing: Inquiry and Argument in College shows students that research is important beyond the classroom and is a necessary component in any career. Beginning with coverage of skills and techniques, this comprehensive text then moves into specific kinds of academic research tasks, showing the generic features and constraints of academic writing. The main issues necessary for understanding how to read and construct research projects are discussed, including plagiarism, copyright and patents, conventions used by different discourse communities, and how writers use sources in different ways. The result is that students are drawn into the thinking process involved in research.

This ebook has been updated to provide you with the latest guidance on documenting sources in MLA style and follows the guidelines set forth in the MLA Handbook, 9th edition (April 2021). From Inquiry to Academic Writing: A Practical Guide. Interesting readings from across the disciplines combine with a step-by-step approach you can apply to your own writing inside and outside of academia.

This highly readable text demystifies the qualitative research process—and helps readers conceptualize their own studies—by organizing the different research paradigms and traditions into coherent clusters. Real-world examples and firsthand perspectives illustrate the research process; instructive exercises and activities build on each other so readers can develop their own proposals or reports as they work through the book. Provided are strategies for selecting a research topic, entering and exiting sites, and navigating the complexities of ethical issues and the researcher's role. Readers learn how to use a range of data collection methods—including observational strategies, interviewing, focus groups, e-mail and chat rooms, and arts-based media—and to manage, analyze, and report the resulting data. Useful pedagogical features include:*In-class and field activities to apply qualitative concepts.*Discussion questions, proposal development exercises, and reflexive journal activities.*Exemplary qualitative studies and two sample proposals.*Cautionary notes, or "Wild Cards," about possible research pitfalls.*Tables that summarize concepts and present helpful tips.

Essential Actions for Academic Writers is a writing textbook for all novice academic students, undergraduate or graduate, to help them understand how to write effectively throughout their academic and professional careers. While these novice writers may use English as a second or additional language, this book is also intended for students who have done little writing in their prior education or who are not yet confident in their academic writing. Essential Actions combines genre research, proven pedagogical practices, and short readings to help students develop their rhetorical flexibility by exploring and practicing the key actions that will appear in academic assignments, such as explaining, summarizing, synthesizing, and arguing. Part I introduces students to rhetorical situation, genre, register, source use, and a framework for understanding how to approach any new writing task. The genre approach recognizes that all writing responds to a context that includes the writer's identity, the reader's expectations, the purpose of the text, and the conventions that shape it. Part II explores each essential action and provides examples of the genres and language that support it. Part III leads students in combining the actions in different genres and contexts, culminating in the project of writing a personal statement for a university or scholarship application.

In the age of Buzzfeeds, hashtags, and Tweets, students are increasingly favoring conversational writing and regarding academic writing as less pertinent in their personal lives, education, and future careers. Writing and Literature: Composition as Inquiry, Learning, Thinking and Communication connects students with works and exercises and promotes student learning that is kairotic and constructive. Dr. Tanya Long Bennett, professor of English at the University of North Georgia, poses questions that encourage active rather than passive learning. Furthering ideas presented in Contribute a Verse: A Guide to First-Year Composition as a complimentary companion, Writing and Literature builds a new conversation covering various genres of literature and writing. Students learn the various writing styles appropriate for analyzing, addressing, and critiquing these genres including poetry, novels, dramas, and research writing. The text and its pairing of helpful visual aids throughout emphasizes the importance of critical reading and analysis in producing a successful composition. Writing and Literature is a refreshing textbook that links learning, literature, and life.