To the Instructor

Write of Way, Essay Strategies with Readings is a Canadian college composition text that teaches students how to write clear messages, effectively organized, and expressed in standard written Canadian English. The text makes it easy to teach students how to write brief essays. Chapters 1–7present twenty-one exemplar essays, three for each of the seven rhetorical modes. (Three essays are new; most essays are in the third-person preferred by many teachers.) Instructors may also direct students to read the published essays—several new to the second edition—and work their way through the apparatus. Write of Way models academic research essays in all three major styles, MLA, APA, and—new to this edition—humanities (as described in the Chicago Manual of Style and Turabian’s A Manual for Writers of Terms Papers, Theses, and Dissertations). When students visit the expanded and updated Web site, they will see how to apply their essay-writing skills to business communication (e.g., progress and incident reports; résumés; formal reports; memos; grant proposals, and so forth) and personal writing (e.g., news releases and social communication).

Write of Way is a Canadian college composition text. Students enjoy the stories of ordinary and extraordinary Canadian people and events, from studying hospitality at Holland College in Prince Edward Island, to visiting the Lennoxville Campus of Champlain Regional College in Quebec, to sipping cappuccino in the Annex near the University of Toronto, to celebrating Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railway, to watching ferruginous hawks in Alberta, to reviewing the art of Mary Pratt at the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in Vancouver.

Write of Way has a complete grammar handbook so composition teachers can comment on virtually every error students make—as employers do. To encourage students to read the particular advice they need, the conventions are presented in small sections. Students can test their new understanding of grammar by completing—new to this edition—at least three grammar activities for each convention presented. Instructors can use the new Write of Way PowerPoint presentations to directly teach these conventions, too.

Write of Way models modern research procedures. The updated versions of the model research essay include material from online databases and Web sites. Students can study the advantages and pitfalls of researching via the Internet. The MLA- and APA-style essays show the newest conventions for documenting electronic documents, and the Write of Way Web site will display any conventions that change after the book is published. Even some of the exemplary brief essays model careful documentation, and one specifically discusses avoiding plagiarism.

The Write of Way Instructors Resource Kit saves time. As colleges reduce the number of hours in programs and reduce the amount of time students participate in college English courses, conscientious instructors are constantly searching for ways to give their students the most bang for their educational bucks. Teachers can use the editor’s feedback system—printed in the Instructor’s Resource Kit, which is available on computer disk so you can customize it for lecture notes, acetate transparencies or PowerPoint presentations—to write coded comments that show students exactly what and where to study in the text. Handout 1 describes a system for motivating students to do this follow-up work for marks. Time-stressed teachers can encourage their students to read the text by testing them with the multiple-choice tests provided for each chapter. While students can mark some of their own work because the answers are given in the text, the answers for other activities appear only in the Instructor’s Manual, and some activities and answers appear only in the Instructor’s Manual so that teachers can present new material for group activities, lecture examples, or tests.

Write of Way is based on contemporary teaching methods. Write of Way helps instructors who want their students writing from the beginning of the course. The text is filled with activities—individual and group—that teach researching, notetaking, outlining, and grammar.
Students learn faster when they understand the overall goal of learning tasks. The COSA formula shows students the big picture: Communication is assured when the appropriate content (C) is effectively organized (O), expressed in standard written Canadian English (S), and presented with a pleasing appearance (A). This easy-to-remember formula helps students see the need to learn such details as narrowing a topic, creating outlines, controlling the semicolon, and learning MLA style.

Write of Way is flexible. Write of Way makes it easy for teachers to jump-start student writing by beginning with the hands-on overview of essay writing in the first chapter or by studying the details of essay writing in chapters 2–5 and reviewing the writing process by studying chapter 1 just before writing the first essay.

Write of Way, Essay Strategies with Readings is the result of 30 years of trying to understand how human beings learn to read and write. My apprenticeship has included stints tutoring adult illiterates, teaching our own three children—while they were babies—to read and write, tutoring reading and writing in elementary schools, teaching reading education courses to teachers and teachers-in-training, and teaching English composition and report writing to college students. I believe passionately that the lives of working men and women are enriched by the ability to read and write well. Your support of the first edition encourages me to continue developing a text that helps students become more literate. Please continue telling me what you want Write of Way to be. I’ll respond via e-mail (douglasb.rogers@sympatico.ca) or the Web pages (http://www.prenticehall.ca/rogers). And consider inviting me to your college. There’s little I enjoy more than a chance to strategize with other teachers of English.
Write of Way shows students that they can live better lives if they learn to write better. Can we do less for our students in this new information era?