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Real Writing with Readings
Paragraphs and Essays for College, Work, and Everyday LifeEighth Edition| ©2019 Susan Anker; Miriam Moore
Real Writing with Readings delivers a powerful message to students: Good writing skills are both attainable and essential. Concise Four Basics boxes and engaging paragraph- and essay-writing chapters present the writing process in clear, easy to follow steps. Relevant readings that
Real Writing with Readings delivers a powerful message to students: Good writing skills are both attainable and essential. Concise Four Basics boxes and engaging paragraph- and essay-writing chapters present the writing process in clear, easy to follow steps. Relevant readings that resonate with students’ everyday lives are threaded throughout, with examples ranging from student papers to real workplace samples and professional essays. The Four Most Serious Errors and other sentence-level chapters cover grammar in a lively and supportive way, with plenty of opportunities for practice and application.
Susan Anker and new co-author Miriam Moore encourage students to connect what they learn with their own experiences, goals, and the needs and expectations of the larger world. The book’s real world emphasis is brought to life through Profiles in Success, which show former students in a variety of professions and how they use writing in their jobs. And Miriam Moore’s expertise in reading and ELL shine through the new edition with its expanded coverage of reading and critical thinking skills and support for ELL students woven throughout the text, as well as in the notes for instructors.
Access to LaunchPad Solo for Readers and Writers can be packaged with Real Writing with Readings at no extra cost. LaunchPad Solo is a robust media package that brings together video tutorials, interactive grammar quizzes, and valuable writing instruction that gives students the practice to master the skills they need to succeed.
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Bring writing to life for your students
Real Writing with Readings delivers a powerful message to students: Good writing skills are both attainable and essential. Concise Four Basics boxes and engaging paragraph- and essay-writing chapters present the writing process in clear, easy to follow steps. Relevant readings that resonate with students’ everyday lives are threaded throughout, with examples ranging from student papers to real workplace samples and professional essays. The Four Most Serious Errors and other sentence-level chapters cover grammar in a lively and supportive way, with plenty of opportunities for practice and application.
Susan Anker and new co-author Miriam Moore encourage students to connect what they learn with their own experiences, goals, and the needs and expectations of the larger world. The book’s real world emphasis is brought to life through Profiles in Success, which show former students in a variety of professions and how they use writing in their jobs. And Miriam Moore’s expertise in reading and ELL shine through the new edition with its expanded coverage of reading and critical thinking skills and support for ELL students woven throughout the text, as well as in the notes for instructors.
Access to LaunchPad Solo for Readers and Writers can be packaged with Real Writing with Readings at no extra cost. LaunchPad Solo is a robust media package that brings together video tutorials, interactive grammar quizzes, and valuable writing instruction that gives students the practice to master the skills they need to succeed.
Features
- A comprehensive teaching and learning package, Real Writing gives instructors the resources they need to focus on their students. It combines carefully curated readings, writing samples, writing assignments, grammar instruction, critical thinking and reading coverage, and ELL support in one volume.
- A variety of paragraph and essay length writing activities and assignments throughout Real Writing with Readings aid students in translating their writing skills to the real world, asking them to practice concepts through the lens of tasks they will need to complete in college and beyond, such as analyzing monthly expenses, evaluating instructors, and creating a résumé. It also offers students numerous writing models ranging from sample student paragraphs and essays to examples of workplace writing and professional readings. Plus each rhetorical mode chapter features a step-by-step writing guide and checklist that students can refer to when completing their writing assignments.
- Profiles of Success bring writing to life for students. These profiles feature former students who regularly use writing in their careers, highlighting their background and the ways in which they use writing beyond the classroom. These inspirational stories give students an idea of the diverse range of careers in which writing skills are valuable—from auto technician to chief of police—and how they, too, can hope to reach their career goals.
- The Four Basics and Four Most Serious Errors make the writing process and grammar manageable. Real Writing breaks the writing process down into logical steps, focusing on the four basics of each rhetorical mode as well as the four most serious errors in grammar. This approach lets students digest information at their own pace, helping them really understand each concept without overwhelming them.
New to This Edition
- Expanded support for ELL students runs through the book in the form of ELL teaching tips for instructors, and Language Notes for students. These Notes point out English features that differ from other languages (and thus show non-native speakers things to watch out for), but are carefully called out as linguistic notes about the language, not as problems that would single out ELL students in the classroom.
- Expanded critical thinking coverage includes robust coverage of active and critical reading throughout the first chapter and the first part, with an expanded discussion of previewing, paraphrasing, and summarizing. “Read to write” questions and annotation suggestions remind students to read actively, notice a writer’s strategies, and consider how those strategies could be applied in their own writing. In addition, “Reflect and Apply” questions in each chapter are designed to promote critical thinking and skills transfer to writing situations in other courses, disciplines, and contexts.
- New reading selections, most focusing on the theme of education, cover topics important to college students of all ages and backgrounds, like learning strategies, learning disabilities, navigating college, and overcoming challenges. New student essays include one by an ELL writer, and the argument chapter now features an expanded section inviting students to consider the quality and use of source material by the writers of the paired selections.
- Four new Profiles of Success highlight the successful writing of a more diverse group of former student writers who better reflect the diversity of the developmental student population, demonstrating concretely to students how they themselves can succeed.
- The Four Basics have been streamlined for clarity, and include instruction for each part: the main idea (first basic), primary support (second basic), secondary support (third basic), and organization (fourth basic).
- A new mode-appropriate grammar in context feature in each of the modes chapters demonstrates how grammatical concepts are used for particular rhetorical purposes (using past tenses in narrative, for example, or parallel structures in classification)
- A new research/MLA appendix provides quick answers to students’ research questions and helpful documentation guidance.
- New custom options available through our ForeWords for English library make it easy to adapt Real Writing to meet your students’ needs. Add Sentence Guides for Academic Writers, the Insiders’ Guide to Academic Planning, or browse our complete library of ForeWords. Add up to two ForeWords chapters at no additional cost.

Real Writing with Readings
Eighth Edition| ©2019
Susan Anker; Miriam Moore
Digital Options

Real Writing with Readings
Eighth Edition| 2019
Susan Anker; Miriam Moore
Table of Contents
Thematic Table of Contents
Preface
Real Support for Instructors and Students
A Note to Students from the Authors
Part 1: How to Write Paragraphs and Essays
1. Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing: Making Connections
2. Writing Basics: Audience, Purpose, and Process
3. Finding Your Topic and Writing Your Topic Sentence and Thesis Statement: Making a Point
4. Supporting Your Point: Finding Details, Examples, and Facts
5. Drafting and Revising: The Writing Process
Part 2: Writing Different Kinds of Paragraphs and Essays
6. Narration: Writing That Tells Important Stories
7. Illustration: Writing That Gives Examples
8. Description: Writing That Creates Pictures in Words
9. Process Analysis: Writing That Explains How Things Happen
10. Classification: Writing That Sorts Things into Groups
11. Definition: Writing That Tells What Something Means
12. Comparison and Contrast: Writing That Shows Similarities and Differences
13. Cause and Effect: Writing That Explains Reasons or Results
14. Argument: Writing That Persuades
Part 3: The Four Most Serious Errors
15. The Basic Sentence: An Overview
16. Fragments: Incomplete Sentences
17. Run-Ons: Two Sentences Joined Incorrectly
18. Problems with Subject-Verb Agreement: When Subjects and Verbs Don’t Match
19. Verb Tense: Using Verbs to Express Different Times
Part 4: Other Grammar Concerns
20. Pronouns: Using Substitutes for Nouns
21. Adjectives and Adverbs: Using Descriptive Words
22. Misplaced and Dangling Modifiers: Avoiding Confusing Descriptions
23. Coordination and Subordination: Joining Sentences with Related Ideas
24. Parallelism: Balancing Ideas
25. Sentence Variety: Putting Rhythm in Your Writing
26. Formal English and ESL Concerns: Grammar Trouble Spots for Multilingual Students
Part 5: Word Use
27. Word Choice: Using the Right Words
28. Commonly Confused Words: Avoiding Mistakes with Soundalike Words
29. Spelling: Using the Right Letters
Part 6: Punctuation and Capitalization
30. Commas ( , )
31. Apostrophes ( ’ )
32. Quotation Marks ( " " )
33. Other Punctuation ( ; : ( ) -- - )
34. Capitalization: Using Capital Letters
EDITING REVIEW TESTS 1–10
Appendix A: Research and MLA
Appendix B: Interpreting a Prompt
Index I-1
Real Take-Away Points
Editing and Proofreading Marks
For Easy Reference: Selected Lists and Charts
Authors

Susan Anker
Susan Anker (BA, MEd, Boston University) brings a unique perspective to the teaching of the developmental writing course. She taught English and developmental writing before entering college publishing, where she worked for eighteen years: as a sales representative and English/ESL editor at Macmillan Publishing Company; as developmental English/ESL editor, executive editor, and editor in chief at St. Martin’s Press; and as vice president and editor in chief for humanities at Houghton Mifflin Company. In each of these positions, she worked with developmental writing instructors and students, maintaining her early interest in the field. Since the publication of the first edition of Real Writing in 1998, Anker has traveled extensively to campuses across the country, continuing her conversations with instructors and students and giving workshops and presentations. She believes that the writing course is, for many students, their first, best opportunity to learn the skills they will need to succeed in college and achieve their goals.

Miriam Moore
Miriam Moore (BA, Baylor University; MA, PhD, University of South Carolina) discovered her passion for teaching over 20 years ago when, as a graduate student, she worked with ESL writers in a sheltered section of first-year composition. Since then, she has taught in a state university, an intensive English program, an industry-sponsored ESL program, and two community colleges. Whether teaching developmental writing, literacy, ESL grammar, reading, or first-year composition, her focus is the same: to introduce students to academic culture and provide instruction that will help them succeed in their academic programs. She is currently professor of English and ESL at Lord Fairfax Community College in Middletown, Virginia, where she is developing an expanded ESL program and leading the College’s implementation of the Virginia Community College System (VCCS) redesign of development English. In 2011-2012, she served on the team which developed the integrated curriculum for the VCCS redesign, and she has presented strategies for teaching developmental and ESL courses at local, state, regional, and national conferences.
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Real Writing with Readings
Eighth Edition| 2019
Susan Anker; Miriam Moore
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