Study chapter two in your textbook, "Effective Reading" (43-83)

Here is the writing assignment from your textbook:

As a student, you read many textbooks. Choose one you are using or have used in the past and write an evaluation of it. The critique should be similar to a book or movie review you might read in a newspaper: it should both describe and evaluate the text. Use the previewing, reviewing, and critical reading strategies you learned about in this chapter to examine the book. First, determine the text's purpose. Is it meant to be a comprehensive treatment of the subject, a general overview, an auxiliary to a more substantial text? While previewing the text, brainstorm a list of topics you will cover in your critique. List anything you might want to include about the text's content, organization, visual features, or style. You might want to talk to other students who have used the text to gather more information about what is appealing or unappealing to them. Your review of the text should give students and instructors a good idea about the text's strengths and weaknesses in fulfilling its purpose(Troiano and Scott 77).

Here are my added directions for this assignment:

For this assignment, use your textbook for English 137, The Contemporary Writer by Troiano and Scott. Because I am familiar with this textbook, it will be easier for me to evaluate your essay.

Make sure your essay has the three basic parts: introduction, body, conclusion. Your main idea should be stated at the end of your introduction. The introduction should have an interest catcher, something to attract the reader's attention (see pages 172-174).

Each body paragraph should have a topic sentence, and each paragraph should contain specific examples to illustrate the idea in your topic sentence (see pages 164-167). For example, if you say, "This textbook introduces the student to many different kinds of writing," then you need to tell what these different kinds of writing are.

Or if you say, "This textbook gives writing assignments in each chapter that are related to the essays in the same chapter," then give examples and explain the connection between the essays and the writing assignments. The point is that you must build your paragraphs with specific information about the book by giving examples and explaining the examples.

Finally, your essay should have a conclusion that refers back to the main idea in your introduction and restates it while giving some additional comments based on the observations you have made about the textbook in the body of your essay.

The completed essay must be at least 500 words. There is no limit on length, but all essays should be concise, informative, and correct. Longer essays that multiply errors simply provide more justification for a poor grade. Microsoft Word will tell you how many words there are in a document.

Include a works cited entry for your textbook. See your textbook or follow the link from my web site for help with MLA documentation style.