Writing with a purpose

Description

This shorter form of Writing with a Purpose is issued at the urging of those instructors who wish to use the material on rhetoric but do not use a handbook. The text is the same as that of the first three parts of the fifth edition, except that Chapter 10 has been considerably expanded to meet the needs of classes which make writing about literature a major part of the work in composition.Those who are familiar with the fifth edition know that it has been extensively influenced by the suggestions of critics made both in the planning stage and during the revision, suggestions which led to five main kinds of changes:1. Simplification of content and style.2. Greater attention to the prevailing interests and preoccupations of students today.3. An even wider application of the concept of purpose as a guide through the composition process, especially with reference to the writer's awareness of his obligation to his readers.4. More opportunity for classroom analysis of models and exercises so that instructors and students need depend less on the author's analysis.5. More direct advice to the student to help him apply the principles of composition to his own writing. Besides putting these suggestions to work, the fifth edition retains the concept of prewriting introduced in the preceding edition; states more explicitly than before that students are writing for the class, including the instructor as a member, not for the instructor alone; contains a new chapter on style as a function of purpose; and reduces the emphasis on purely formal logic in argument, attempting instead to unite the classical modes of persuasion with Kenneth Burke's theory of identification.