Real Writing with Readings Paragraphs and Essays for College, Work, and Everyday Life

Real Writing with Readings delivers a powerful message to students: Good writing skills are both attainable and essential. Concise “Four Basics” boxes, together with mode-specific graphic organizers, “Paragraphs versus Essays” graphics, and engaging paragraph- and essay-writing chapters, present the writing process both visually and in words as a clear, easy-to-follow process. The “Four Building Blocks of Effective Sentences” (Chapter 16) and other sentence-level chapters cover grammar in a lively and supportive way, with plenty of opportunities for practice and application.
 
And now, Achieve with Real Writing puts student writing at the center of your course and keeps revision at the core, with a dedicated composition space that guides students through drafting, peer review, source check, reflection, and revision. Achieve is a flexible, integrated suite of tools for designing and facilitating writing assignments, all in a single powerful, easy-to-use platform that works for face-to-face, remote, and hybrid learning scenarios. Fully editable pre-built assignments support the book’s approach and an e-book is included.

PART 1: How to Write Paragraphs and Essays
1 Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing: Making Connections
2 Writing Basics: Audience, Purpose, Form, and Process
3 Finding Your Topic and Writing Your Thesis Statement: Making a Point
4 Supporting Your Point: Finding Details, Examples, and Facts
5 Drafting: The Complete Version
*6 Revising: Seeing a Draft with Fresh Eyes

PART 2: Writing Different Kinds of Paragraphs and Essays
7 Narration: Writing That Tells Important Stories
8 Illustration: Writing That Gives Examples
9 Description: Writing That Creates Pictures in Words
10 Process Analysis: Writing That Explains How Things Happen
11 Classification: Writing That Sorts Things into Groups
12 Definition: Writing That Tells What Something Means
13 Comparison and Contrast: Writing That Shows Similarities and Differences
14 Cause and Effect: Writing That Explains Reasons or Results
15 Argument: Writing That Persuades

PART 3: Four Building Blocks of Effective Sentences
16 The Basic Sentence: An Overview
17 Make Sentences Complete: Avoiding Fragments
18 Join Sentences Accurately: Correcting Run-ons
19 Make Subjects and Verbs Match: Solving Agreement Problems
20 Indicate Time Clearly: Addressing Verb Problem
 
PART 4: Editing for Clarity, Cohesion, and Conventions
21 Word Choice: Selecting Accurate and Specific Nouns and Verbs
22 Pronouns: Keeping Reference Clear
23 Description: Modifying Nouns and Verbs
24 Balance and Rhythm: Making Sentences Easy to Read
25 Capitalization, Apostrophes, and Spelling
26 Commas
27 Quotation Marks and Italics
28 Other Punctuation

APPENDIX: Citing Research Sources in MLA Style

* = New to this edition