1st Edition

Community Writing Researching Social Issues Through Composition

By Paul S. Collins Copyright 2001
212 Pages
by Routledge

212 Pages
by Routledge

212 Pages
by Routledge

Community Writing: Researching Social Issues Through Composition employs a series of assignments that guide students to research and write about issues confronting their individual communities. Students start by identifying a community to which they belong and focusing on problems in it, and then analyze possible solutions, construct arguments for them, decide which are likely to succeed, and... Read more
Contents: Your Community and an Issue It Faces. Media Views of an Issue. Examining Solutions. Working Toward Solutions. The Term Paper. Appendices. Further Readings. Using the Freedom of Information Act. Citing Your Sources in the MLA Format.

Biography

Paul S. Collins

"At last, a writing text that takes seriously the student's roles as citizen, thinker, author, researcher, and community member, and shows teachers how to situate a syllabus in the themes and communities of their students. Paul Collins has done a magnificent job in providing writing classes with a strong program for community literacy. This wonderfully useful and readable text offers in-depth writing projects based on student's critical inquiry into their social conditions. In these pages, a skilled writing teacher maps the way to academic skills through civic projects inviting students to examine and improve their communities. Bravo!"
Ira Shor
The College of Staten Island

"Community Writing brings together social responsibility and composition instruction in a most timely and responsible manner. By encouraging each student to identify a community concern that is personally meaningful, Collins provides each individual with a rationale to investigate sources in an appropriately critical manner. Students will profit from the recursive steps that make them increasingly sensitive to the complexities of analyzing issues that relate directly to their own interests. This text will benefit instructors and students as they engage in a substantive dialogue on important issues."
Marilyn S. Sternglass
Professor Emeritus of English, City College of the City University of New York

"Demonstrates a thorough knowledge of recent work in composition studies. This text is particularly impressive in its application of recent work in service learning and critical pedagogy to the first-year writing classroom....I never thought I would use a composition textbook again, but I would use Community Writing."
Carl Whithaus
Stevens Institute of Technology