From Great Paragraphs to Great Essays

Combining elements of the Second Editions ofGreat ParagraphsandGreat Essaysin one text,From Great Paragraphs to Great Essaysteaches students the basics of generating, developing, and organizing their ideas into a paragraph through a step-by-step approach focusing on definition, process, description, and opinion. The essay section offers a varied selection of topics and rhetorical patterns covering narrative, comparison, cause/effect, and argument, as well as writing styles. Both parts include a great variety of sample paragraphs and essays and offer students the opportunity to practice their writing on every page. Practice with grammar and mechanics appears in the chapters as well as in the appendix. Popular editing checklists specific to particular writing assignments also appear in the appendix. The design is open and inviting. From Great Paragraphs to Great Essaysnow makes the successful pedagogy of theGreat Writingseries available to teachers and students who need materials to help students transition from writing paragraphs to essays. Example Paragraphs: To help improve writing skills, all model paragraphs are accompanied by short pre- and post-reading questions that focus students' attention on the paragraph's structure, rhetorical patterns, and other features. Unfamiliar words in theExample Paragraphsare glossed for student reference. Writer's Notes: These notes present brief strategies to help students write effectively. Language Focus: These boxes feature grammar topics related to the type of writing being practiced. Building Better Sentences: This section appears throughout the text asking students to work at the sentence level. Students gain practice in combining short sentences into longer cohesive sentences. This exercise has students practice sentence types, prepositional phrases, pronoun referents, and more. Proofreading: This section offers a variety of practice exercises designed to help students proofread and correct their own composition and grammatical errors. Sequencing: Activities in this section provide practice of writing devices used for sequencing such as transition words and phrases. Copying: The exercises in this section practice paragraph form and encourage students to create paragraphs by copying sentences and adding their own original titles. Analyzing a Paragraph: A series of guided questions directs students to analyze different elements of a paragraph. Original Writing: This is the final writing assignment for the unit. In Part 1 of the text, students are asked to write paragraphs on an assigned topic using any rhetorical style, while in Part 2, students are asked to use the rhetorical mode featured in the unit. Each unit in Part 2 features five additional writing assignments on a variety of topics. Peer Editing: Guided by specific questions--different questions appear with each assignment--on the peer editing sheets in Appendix 5, each student reads a classmate's paragraph and writes comments and suggestions for improving the paragraph.Folse, Keith S. is the author of 'From Great Paragraphs to Great Essays ', published 0009 under ISBN 9780618265374 and ISBN 0618265376.