Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents: Getting our feet wet: Practicing the writing process -- Making the most of reading -- Crafting paragraphs: Writing paragraphs -- Revising paragraphs -- Picturing a place(description) -- Telling your own story(narration) -- Illustrating through examples -- Creating and explaining groups(classification) -- Recognizing causes, explaining effects -- Explaining activities: doing or understanding them(process analysis) -- Exploring similarities and differences(Comparison or contrast) -- Building essays: Introducing the essay -- Expanding paragraphs into essays -- Revising essays -- Defining essays -- Defining terms, clarifying ideas -- Writing persuasively(argument) -- Taking essay exams -- Writing a research essay -- Polishing style: Creating sentence variety -- Choosing the most effective word -- Practicing sentence sense: Working with sentence parts -- Coordination, subordination and parallelism -- Run-ons, comma splices and sentence fragments -- Verbs: form and agreement -- Pronouns: reference, agreement and form -- Adjectives and adverbs: words that describe -- Commas, other punctuation marks and mechanics Spelling and sound-alike words -- Learning from professional readings --