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      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        April 2020

        The craft of writing in sociology

        Developing the argument in undergraduate essays and dissertations

        by Andrew Balmer, Anne Murcott

        This is an indispensable companion for students studying sociology and related disciplines, such as politics and human geography, as well as courses which draw upon sociological writing, such as nursing, social psychology or health studies. It demystifies the process of constructing coherent and powerful arguments, starting from an essay's opening paragraphs, building evidence and sequencing key points in the middle, through to pulling together a punchy conclusion. It gives a clear and helpful overview of the most important grammatical rules in English, and provides advice on how to solve common problems experienced in writing, including getting rid of waffle, overcoming writer's block and cutting an essay down to its required length. Using examples from essays written by sociology students at leading universities, the book shows what they have done well, what could be done better and how to improve their work using the techniques reviewed.

      • Teaching, Language & Reference
        December 2014

        Your Writing Well

        by Dr. Bob Davis

        Fifteen essays for anyone in any profession or academic level, Your Writing Well studies every aspect of the writing process, providing faster means to better products than do narrowly focused trade handbooks and academic texts. Having combed through writing pedagogy and cut through nonsense about composition and grammar, Dr. Davis provides an all-inclusive set of theory highlighting logic-based skills and practical strategies to create, develop, defend, and communicate coherently organized, well-expressed thoughts. Not marketed for dummies, Your Writing Well assumes readers have the smarts to follow mature common-sense guidance, grasp examples, and thus compensate for their existing lack of knowledge of what to do, how and why to do it, and where. Informed not by needless prohibitions but by relaxed, reassuring balances of freedom and prudent regulation, Your Writing Well is a comprehensive cure for all writers’ ailments and deficiencies.

      • Teaching, Language & Reference
        October 2019

        Wordplay Book 1

        by Afrasiyab Khan

        Considering the manifold benefits of creative writing, the three-book Word Play series is designed to help both the teachers and the students to take up the task of creative writing.  Includes: Intriguing topics chosen to increase student interest. Rich vocabulary to help build meaningful sentences. Discussion starter questions for getting the thoughts organised. Careful thematic division to provide continuity and progression.

      • Teaching, Language & Reference
        November 2022

        Easy-to-Read Chinese Short Stories, Book 2

        by April Zhang and Carlton Cash

        This is the second book in the series that is for Chinese learners and by Chinese learners.   Since 2021, MSL Master has invited Chinese language learners worldwide to participate in an annual event, Chinese Writing Contest. Entries are limited to using 320 Chinese characters only.   In 2022, 58 entries were received. After a public vote on Twitter, the best 14 were included in this book.   These are interesting stories and moving poems. Family, friendship and love are the main themes. The presence of nature is prominent. An element of inexplicable phenomena is also felt.   The authors were from seven countries, Malaysia, China, the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. The oldest one was 70 years old, while the youngest one only 13. They shared a passion for the Chinese language and the love of a good challenge!   Their abilities of moulding these 320 characters were varied. While some were skilful, others were still feeling their ways and trying inventive combinations. While some relied on literary language, others preferred using simple expressions to express deep meanings.   Because of its unique mixture of texts, this book has something for evereyone, regardless whether you are beginners or advanced Chinese language learners.   Free audio and a sample story are available here: https://www.mslmaster.com/index.php/chinese-textbooks/easy-to-read-series

      • Writing skills

        Center Will Hold

        ed. Michael A. Pemberton & Joyce Kinkead

        by Michael Pemberton

        In The Center Will Hold, Pemberton and Kinkead have compiled a major volume of essays on the signal issues of scholarship that have established the writing center field and that the field must successfully address in the coming decade. The new century opens with new institutional, demographic, and financial challenges, and writing centers, in order to hold and extend their contribution to research, teaching, and service, must continuously engage those challenges. Appropriately, the editors offer the work of Muriel Harris as a key pivot point in the emergence of writing centers as sites of pedagogy and research. The volume develops themes that Harris first brought to the field, and contributors here offer explicit recognition of the role that Harris has played in the development of writing center theory and practice. But they also use her work as a springboard from which to provide reflective, descriptive, and predictive looks at the field. A collection that suggests a new agenda for research and teaching in writing centers, The Center Will Hold signals a turn toward the future in writing center scholarship. It belongs on the bookshelf of every writing center and will be used with graduate students and in tutor training seminars for years to come.

      • Teaching skills & techniques

        Situating Portfolios

        by Kathleen Yancey

      • Creative writing & creative writing guides

        Teaching Lives

        by Wendy Bishop

      • Creative writing & creative writing guides

        Composition Studies As A Creative Art

        Teaching, Writing, Scholarship, Administration

        by Lynn Bloom

        Bloom gathers twenty of her most recent essays (some previously unpublished) on critical issues in teaching writing. She addresses matters of philosophy and pedagogy, class and marginality and gender, and textual terror transformed to textual power. Yet the body of her work and this representative collection of it remains centered, coherent, and personal. This work focuses on the creative dynamics that arise from the interrelation of writing, teaching writing, and ways of reading—and the scholarship and administrative issues engendered by it. To regard composition studies as a creative art is to engage in a process of intellectual or aesthetic free play, and then to translate the results of this play into serious work that yet retains the freedom and playfulness of its origins. The book is fueled by a mixture of faith in the fields that compose composition studies, hope that efforts of composition teachers can make a difference, and a sense of community in its broadest meaning. Included are Bloom's well-known essays "Teaching College English as a Woman," "Freshman Composition as a Middle Class Enterprise," and many more recent works, equally provocative and insightful.

      • Literature: history & criticism

        Saying And Silence

        by Frank Farmer

      • Writing & editing guides
        May 2013

        501 Writers Useful Phrases

        by Quentin Cope

        501 Writers Useful Phrases 501 Writers Useful Phrases is a self help book for writers and authors, full of subject sentences and one-liners. You can use it as a ‘reminder’ tool when looking for a phrase or description of a particular moment that simply won’t come to you in a head full of words and characters. This will definitely not solve all your structural writing problems, and it’s certainly not designed to, but it is a great help at one o’clock in the morning when you simply want to get that last word down, with a smile of satisfaction, before curling up with the reoccurring dream of your next one selling a million.

      • Writing & editing guides
        August 2013

        501 More Writers Useful Phrases

        by Quentin Cope

        501 More Writers Useful Phrases This second edition of the ‘Writers Useful Phrases’ is not the complete answer to a ‘writer’s prayer’, but it is a great second line reference book of phrases you can use every day in your writing journey. So, what does 501 “More” Writers Useful Phrases contain? It’s simple really. If you have the first edition, this book is divided in to the same ten sections as the original version with each one containing 50 short phrases, quotes, expressions or complete sentences to fit a particular subject heading. The last section contains 51 entries, again making a total of 501 for this edition. Hopefully, you the reader … and more importantly, you the writer, will gain something more from this second writers new phrasebook in the series. It will make a great reference book and a significant addition to ‘501 Writers Useful Phrases’ … not only at the initial manuscript stage in the production of your next epic novel, but at the tough edit stage where just one small adjustment can make all the difference.

      • Writing & editing guides
        September 2013

        501 Writers One-Liners

        by Quentin Cope

        501 Writers One Liners This book of One-Liners is the third in the ‘501’ series. It contains a selection of one line thoughts and ponderings, many of which are amusing and some of which are profound. This offering is aimed mainly at writers and authors as a reminder pad of situations and observations seen through the eyes of someone with a sense of humor, or someone who has taken the trouble to actually sit on that mountain peak … somewhere, and think! The format is similar to ‘501 Writers Useful Phrases’ and ‘501 More Writers Useful Phrases’ in that the content is divided into ten sections with 50 ‘one liners’ in each section and 51 in the final section. If this little book does nothing more than bring a smile to your face at three o’clock in the morning, slaving tirelessly over the ending of Chapter Four, after a full day of looking after the kids or holding down a high pressure job for ten hours, then it will have been worth it. However, if only one of the offerings within these pages jogs a memory button, allowing you to construct that searched for finished phrase, then this can only be considered a bonus.

      • Writing & editing guides
        February 2014

        101 Writers Short Blurb Examples

        by Quentin Cope

        101 Short Blurb Examples With a limited amount of space available on a web page and with only a ‘thumbnail’ size image to wet your potential reader’s appetite, the ‘short blurb’ of up to 100 words becomes more and more important in the process of promoting your work as a writer. It’s now recognized as part of the smart marketing process, inviting a browsing reader to delve more into your Web link, eventually opening up your book … and reading the first few pages. Some fortunate individuals, along with many traditionally published authors, will have professionals employed to write ‘blurb’ for them, but the rest of us simply have to buckle down and get on with what is considered by many to be one of the most difficult processes of being a self-published writer. So, this little book will hopefully provide you with some useful assistance along the way by offering up 101 actual ‘blurbs’ written in short form and containing no more than 100 words. They are loosely edited into ten different subject headings, or writer’s genre, with ten examples under each heading, except for the last one, where there are eleven. After each example, a further distillation of the same subject matter is provided, defined widely with a certain amount of writer’s license, as a ‘Single Sentence’ … and both containing a word count as a confirmation of size. This is the second in the 101 series by the same author and a follow on from the very popular 501 series books for writers, potential writers and simply those of us who have an urge to get that sometimes elusive story down on paper.

      • Writing & editing guides
        November 2013

        101 Fiction Writing Tips

        by Quentin Cope

        101 Fiction Writing Tips Fiction writing is thought by many would be authors to be the most popular published genre and therefore perhaps the best to be aiming at when considering a writing career. Current best estimates are that in 2016, published books will double in number from all of those in existence at the end of 2011. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to get two knowledgeable individuals to agree on what that figure is in reality. However, one reasonably sound statistic is the percentage of fiction and non-fiction publications now produced annually in the English language. The current estimates are around 30% for fiction and 70% for non-fiction. So, the lesson to learn there then, is that you may stand a considerably better chance of success as a writer by putting together a book of your grandmother’s best apple pie secrets than attempting the possibly thankless task of coming face to face with the prospect of writing a novel … a work of fiction … a work of fantasy, a work that will need to find a particular audience. This book is not an answer to that quandary and neither does it offer any form of guarantee to you as a potential author. What is does provide however, is a list of 101 tips of advice and reference to the writer who simply wants’ to ‘get on with the job!’ These offerings are provided from personal experience of both the self-publishing and traditional publishing routes. They are collected together in this short book format with the sole aim of supplying you, the potential writer of fantastic fiction, with a series of easy to absorb statements and explanations written in a language that is uncomplicated and to the point. Hopefully, some or much of it will afford you the help and assistance you may be looking for and therefore energize you in the pursuit of your writing projects.

      • Creative writing & creative writing guides

        Wiring The Writing Center

        by Eric Hobson

      • Creative writing & creative writing guides

        Passions Pedagogies and 21st Century Technologies

        by Gail Hawisher

      • Creative writing & creative writing guides

        Composing Research

        A Contextualist Research Paradigm for Rhetoric and Composition

        by Cindy Johanek

        In Composing Research, Cindy Johanek offers a new perspective on the ideological conflict between qualitative and quantitative research approaches, and the theories of knowledge that inform them. With a paradigm that is sensitive to the context of one's research questions, she argues, scholars can develop less dichotomous forms that invoke the strengths of both research traditions. Context-oriented approaches can lift the narrative from beneath the numbers in an experimental study, for example, or bring the useful clarity of numbers to an ethnographic study. A pragmatic scholar, Johanek moves easily across the boundaries that divide the field, and argues for contextualist theory as a lens through which to view composition research. This approach brings with it a new focus, she writes. "This new focus will call us to attend to the contexts in which rhetorical issues and research issues converge, producing varied forms, many voices, and new knowledge, indeed reconstructing a discipline that will be simultaneously focused on its tasks, its knowledge-makers, and its students." Composing Research is a work full of personal voice and professional commitment and will be a welcome addition to the research methods classroom and to the composition researcher's own bookshelf.

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