College Writing Skills with Readings

by John Langan

This popular and easy-to-use rhetoric/reader/worktext is designed for freshman writing courses that focus on the essay. College Writing Skills With Reading features John Langan's clear writing style and his wide range of writing assignments and activities that effectively reinforce the four essentials of good writing: unity, support, coherence, and sentence skills. This alternate version provides 25 entertaining and informative essays by professional writers.

Genres: Writing, College, Textbooks, Education

665 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

Reviews

[Jen Knox · Rating 4 out of 5]

I used the 7th/8th Edition for my Freshman Comp course.

Overall, it was a good book. I'm not crazy about the order of chapters, but this was easy enough remedied.
There were a few typos in this book. Which, I know, I shouldn't be one to hone in on, but... it is an English textbook!

My biggest gripe with this book was the choice of Readings. I do wish there would have been more variety. It seems that there wasn't a good representation of the styles of essay that are taught at this level. I think the book could benefit from replacing a few of those readings, but again, many of them ("My Teacher is a Dropout", "College Lectures: Is Anybody Listening?", and a few others) were very, very well-directed pieces.

The assessment tests are somewhat redundant. But, I didn't use them, so that worked out.

I believe teachers should use the text as a tool, not a guide, and so for this purpose, with my style of teaching, Langan's book worked well. I may use it again, though I am very open to suggestion.

[Ashley · Rating 3 out of 5]

I felt as if this book was something that they would use in high school to prep someone for college English. It was very simple and plain spoken. I was quite bored by it as I felt that I learned all of this in 8th grade. Rather disappointed after getting psyched about having an English class, only to find out that I was doing high school review. The class was very slow as one or two people held up the class each day and the reading that was assigned per week was easily done on a lunch break. I can see where this book would have been very helpful to others that struggle with English or someone that has been out of school for many years, but it just wasn't what I was looking forward to. I like to feel challenged in my classes, by my assignments and this book did not fulfill that need.

[Nicole · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was my textbook for CCRI which was made for and required by the school for my English course. It was helpful and informative and I will use this in further English classes for reference and refresher.

[William Jiang · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a Chinese, I like it.

[April Newman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is good material for an entry or developmental college writing course; it keys in on the reading and writing connection and had a decent reading list for students and instructors to work with. It needed supplement with graphic organizers, and might have used more explanation of reading strategies overall.

[Shera]

great book

[Zeeshan Ali]

goog