Essential Actions for Academic Writers is a writing textbook for all novice academic students, undergraduate or graduate, to help them understand how to write effectively throughout their academic and professional careers. While these novice writers may use English as a second or additional language, this book is also intended for students who have done little writing in their prior education or who are not yet confident in their academic writing. Essential Actions combines genre research, proven pedagogical practices, and short readings to help students develop their rhetorical flexibility by exploring and practicing the key actions that will appear in academic assignments, such as explaining, summarizing, synthesizing, and arguing.  Part I introduces students to rhetorical situation, genre, register, source use, and a framework for understanding how to approach any new writing task. The genre approach recognizes that all writing responds to a context that includes the writer’s identity, the reader’s expectations, the purpose of the text, and the conventions that shape it. Part II explores each essential action and provides examples of the genres and language that support it. Part III leads students in combining the actions in different genres and contexts, culminating in the project of writing a personal statement for a university or scholarship application. 

The idea of teaching writing through genres — rather than, say, through prescriptive forms, templates, and rhetorical modes — is intuitively appealing. Yet many teachers have questions, and they are absolutely right to ask them: What are genres? What is genre-based instruction? What do students write if they don’t write essays? Isn’t it easier to teach and learn five-paragraph essays? What’s the role of language in genre teaching? And many more. These are all excellent questions and ones that new and experienced teachers alike have also struggled with. This book sets out to tackle some of the most common questions that teachers, teacher educators, and administrators may have when moving toward a genre-based teaching approach.  

This integrated reader and multi-skills workbook is designed to teach, review, and expand students' reading skills, study skills, vocabulary, and grammar. A major focus of "Forces of Nature, Wildfires" is on writing skills, and each unit contains one free-writing activity and one major writing task. Grammar is reviewed in writing activities and in Language in Use sections. Each reading passage is supported by pre-reading activities, including a vocabulary preview and post-reading activities. Vocabulary is recycled throughout the exercises in the book. Many speaking and pair work activities round out this skills review text. The "Forces of Nature "workbooks combine high-interest readings with skills development activities. Each of the five workbooks features a different skills focus--reading, vocabulary, grammar, study skills, and multi-skill review with writing activities. Each content-based workbook also focuses on a different force of nature--earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes and floods, blizzards, and wildfires. These events were selected because they allow students to develop an understanding of natural events that threaten property, ways of life, and lives. Because information about preparing for a disaster is sometimes unavailable or not at a level that is understandable to some of today's students, tips for surviving each "force of nature "are presented at the end of each workbook.

This workbook is designed to help students understand and use English grammar correctly and effectively. This is a content-based text, and all the examples, readings, and exercises are based on the topic of hurricanes and floods. Each unit in the text covers one area of grammar. Corpus-based grammars of English have been used to inform this text to ensure that the language taught is natural and high-frequency. This text will help students become better readers and writers and listeners and speakers, by showing them how English grammar can be used correctly and effectively. The "Forces of Nature "workbooks combine high-interest readings with skills development activities. Each of the five workbooks features a different skills focus--reading, vocabulary, grammar, study skills, and multi-skill review with writing activities. Each content-based workbook also focuses on a different force of nature--earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes and floods, blizzards, and wildfires. These events were selected because they allow students to develop an understanding of natural events that threaten property, ways of life, and lives. Because information about preparing for a disaster is sometimes unavailable or not at a level that is understandable to some of today's students, tips for surviving each "force of nature "are presented at the end of each workbook. The "Forces of Nature "workbooks are copublished with Artesian Press.

The goal of this collected volume is to explore roles that L2 writing specialists, IEP directors and instructors, writing center administrators, and others within writing studies might play in potential cross-campus dialogues on graduate student writing support. This book is designed both for writing studies researchers interested in new directions for graduate writing research and for practitioners or program directors looking for practical directions for their own programs. It includes a diverse chorus of voices on graduate writing support--both seasoned, well-known researchers in second language writing and composition studies and fresh new voices and perspectives. Part 1, Graduate Writing: What Do We Know? What Do We Need to Know? looks at graduate writing support internationally, laying out what these courses and programs look like currently, what gaps exist in current program design, and what future work is needed. Part 2, Issues in Graduate Program and Curricular Design, explores the nuts and bolts of graduate writing support at both the classroom and program level. While this section does feature specific programs offered from a variety of academic units-IEPs, English or communication departments, writing centers, etc.-the goal is to focus more on principles of design and concerns (academic, administrative, budgetary, etc.) to consider in one's own institutional setting. Part 3, Program Profiles, is a response to the request from many within the graduate writing community for more published examples of successful program models. The volume includes five programs from around the world that highlight particular ways programs were developed to meet specific institutional needs-the University of Delaware, the University of Toronto, the University of New South Wales, Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, and Yale University. The volume ends with reflections on some of the emerging themes and strategies and tips for programmatic responses to graduate student needs.

This volume was written to make the case for changes in second language writing practices away from the five-paragraph essay and toward purposeful, meaningful writing instruction. As the volume editors say, "If you have already rejected the five-paragraph essay, we offer validation and classroom-tested alternatives. If you are new to teaching L2 writing, we introduce critical issues you will need to consider as you plan your lessons and as you consider/review the textbooks and handbooks that continue to promote the teaching of the five-paragraph essay. If you need ammunition to present to colleagues and administrators, we present theory, research, and pedagogy that will benefit students from elementary to graduate school. If you are skeptical about our claims, we invite you to review the research presented here and consider what your students could do beyond writing a five-paragraph essay if you enacted these changes in practice." Part 1 discusses what the five-paragraph essay is not: it is not a very old, established form of writing; it is not a genre; and it is not universal. Part 2 looks at writing practices to show the essay's ineffectiveness in elementary schools, secondary schools, first-year writing classes, university writing courses, undergraduate discipline courses, and graduate school. Part 3 looks beyond the classroom at testing. At the end of each chapter, the authors--all well-known in the field of second language writing--suggest changes to teaching practices based on their theoretical approach and classroom experience. The book closes by reviewing some of the major questions raised in the book, by exploring which questions have been left unanswered, and by offering suggestions for teachers who want to move away from the five-paragraph essay. An assignment sequence for genre-aware writing instruction is included.

"Step Up to the TOEFL(R)""iBT "is a skills-based textbook designed to address the needs of students who have not yet reached a language level to successfully prepare for the TOEFL(R) iBT. This volume does what no other textbook does: it helps intermediate-level students take a "step up" toward preparing themselves for the iBT by teaching and developing some of the grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation skills necessary to do well on the test. Each of the eight units in "Step Up "addresses one rhetorical function (ranging from chronology and sequences to developing ideas and paraphrasing) and includes:

• two Grammar You Can Use topics that strengthen students' receptive and productive language
• three Vocabulary You Need sections highlighting common language functions seen on the iBT
• two Speaking Clearly sections that focus on improving comprehensibility and fluent delivery
• skill-building exercises that practice a language point through high-interest reading, writing, listening, and speaking activities
• iBT practice exercises that focus on a language point in ways similar to those on the actual test (including the integrated speaking and writing tasks) but at this intermediate-level of competency
• Step Up Notes with useful hints and tips about improving performance on the iBT