The Allyn & Bacon Guide to Writing, Brief Edition (MyCompLab Series)

Really takes you through each essay and asks you various questions about it. It's covering pretty much everything about writing. I recommend it.

The university where I teach allows us to choose our own composition text. After much research and personal experience with several composition texts, I use this guide. While I agree that the selected essays do have a liberal slant I do not agree that the writing is too difficult for a freshman to understand.

There is no way that I would assign the entire textbook, cover to cover, for one semester. Even the authors do not suggest this. I use the chapters on reading and writing rhetoric, research, critical data analysis, and writer conferencing with all of my composition classes. Then I pick and choose which specific writing projects/chapters I will use for different levels.

I highly recommend this textbook. It has a lot of acurate and useful information and is a great source for a composition course.

To counterbalance the liberal essays, I add in several others from many different perspectives and fields to allow students to have a wider understanding of the world.

The book contains good up to date information and it has helped me with my College writing class.

I have been required to use this text at one school where I teach, and it is a dismal experience. Most of the other instructors feel the same way, but we are overruled by a minority opinion.

The authors do not have a clue that they are writing this book for a freshman college audience. You need advanced reading skills in order to be able to understand some of the chapters in this book. For example, they overly complicate the chapter on writing evaluations.

The readings are also dry and have a noticeably liberal slant. Although, there are a couple of interesting ones, such as the essay about Sesame Street being sexist. However, there are not enough readings to provide good examples for students to use as models.

If I was not forced to use the book, I would not. This is too much money to spend on a book that is not especially useful.