Never before have parents, teachers, and other advocates for young people been more concerned about the declining quality of higher education. One skill that many students lack when they arrive at college is the ability to write well. The contributors to "Teacher Commentary on Student Papers" analyze some of the cultural, social, and moral changes that have altered the way in which education is given and received, and they offer approaches that have assisted them as teachers both in evaluating the quality of student writing and guiding students to improve their writing.

Areas of expertise of the contributors include composition, cultural studies, English education, literature, writing, and rhetoric. The collection will appeal to both graduate and undergraduate students as well as to experienced and beginning teachers.

This book considers the evolution and characteristics of Nigeria's third-generation literature, which emerged between the late 1980s and the early 1990s and is marked by expressive modes and concerns distinctly different from those of the preceding era. The creative writing of this period reflects new sensibilities and anxieties about Nigeria's changing fortunes in the post-colonial era. The literature of the third generation is startling in its candidness, irreverence as well as the brutal self-disclosure of its characters, and it is governed by an unusually wide-ranging sweep in narrative techniques. This book examines six key texts of the oeuvre: Maria Ajima's The Web, Okey Ndibe's Foreign Gods, Inc., Teju Cole's Open City, Chika Unigwe's On Black Sisters Street, Lola Shoneyin's The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's The Thing Around Your Neck. The texts interpret contemporary corruption and other unspeakable social malaise; together, they point to the exciting future of Nigerian literature, which has always been defined by its daring creativity and inventive expressive modes. Even conventional storytelling strategies receive revitalizing energies in these angst-driven narratives. This book will be of interest to students and researchers of contemporary African literature, Sociology, Gender and women's studies, and post-colonial cultural expression more broadly.

Intellectual exchange among African creative writers is the subject of this highly innovative and wide-ranging look at several forms of intertextuality on the continent. Focusing on the issue of the availability of old canonical texts of African literature as a creative resource, this study throws light on how African authors adapt, reinterpret, and redeploy existing texts in the formulation of new ones. Contemporary African writers are taking advantage of and extending the resources available in the existing native literary tradition. But the field of inter-ethnic/trans-national African literary inter-textual studies is a novel one in itself as the theme of African writers' debt to Euro-American authors has been the critical commonplace in African literature. Detailing the echoes and reverberations the voices of the past have generated, and the distinctive uses to which the writers are putting one another's works, the book demonstrates that the influence of local stock is significant: it is pervasive and widespread, and manifests itself in ways both random and systematic, but it is a ubiquitous presence in the African literary imagination.

All who treasure great literature recognize the pivotal role played by a title. But, until now, at both the undergraduate and the graduate level, no book-length study has devoted detailed expert attention to the subject of academic paper titling. Helping Students to Write Successful Paper Titles is the first attempt at an extended exploration of this subject, breaking new ground by confirming the significance of a title as an apparatus for scholarly endeavor. Academic writing's dependence on the title imparts pre-eminence to the part of the paper that bridges the gap between its contents and the reader, making the title more than just another component of the work and investing the paper with an identity. Through systematic examination of a variety of paper titles, the study offers a cohesive picture of the function of the title in academic writing and guides students in the art of effective title making.

Reader's Guides provide a comprehensive starting point for any advanced student, giving an overview of the context, criticism and influence of key works. Each guide also offers students fresh critical insights and provides a practical introduction to close reading and to analysing literary language and form. They provide up-to-date, authoritative but accessible guides to the most commonly studied classic texts. Chinua Achebe's remarkable novel Things Fall Apart (1958) is probably the best known African novel and has become one of the world's most influential literary masterpieces. Since publication, a total of nearly 12 million copies have been sold, with translations into more than 50 languages. Despite its undoubted success, its apparent simplicity has tended to blind readers to the dazzling storytelling resources and the inventive language, plot, setting, and characterization which first draw them to the novel and keep them reading. This is the ideal guide to the text, setting Things Fall Apart in its historical, intellectual and cultural contexts, offering analyses of its themes, style and structure, providing exemplary close readings, presenting an up-to-date account of its critical reception and examining its afterlife in literature, film and popular culture. It includes points for discussion, suggestions for further study and an annotated guide to relevant reading.