With the book review assignment completed this past Sunday, I thought it might be helpful/useful to those in and beyond ENG 567 to have a central place from which to access all reviews (save one). Below are links to and snippets of each review:
Beach, Richard, Chris Anson, Lee-Ann Kastman Breuch, and Thom Swiss. Teaching Writing Using Blogs, Wikis, and other Digital Tools. Norwood, MA: Christopher-Gordon Publishers, 2009. Reviewed by Michelle English.
an excellent reference tool for both instructors who are just learning how to navigate the digital environment and those who already engage students in this type of writing.
Birkenstein, Cathy, and Gerald Graff. They Say, I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing. 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2010. Reviewed by Ashley Armstrong.
a wonderful book that not only provides students with the essential answers that they will be asking for when writing, but the two authors do it in a way that allows the students to feel in control.
Bogost, Ian. Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007. Reviewed by John McKeown.
Perhaps the largest benefit I could see composition teachers gaining from reading Bogost's texts is the knowledge that getting students to become better writers could be accomplished through the use of procedural rhetoric
Brueggemann, Brenda Jo, and Cynthia Lewiecki-Wilson. Disability and the Teaching of Writing: A Critical Sourcebook. Boston, MA: Bedford/St.Martin’s, 2008. Reviewed by Megan Breidenstein.
This sourcebook is a must for anyone going into the field of teaching composition, writing center work, or who just wants to have more knowledge on disabilities in academia.
Carter, Shannon. The Way Literacy Lives: Rhetorical Dexterity and Basic Writing Instruction. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2008. Reviewed by Amanda Dunkel.
What this book is successfully able to do is voice the concerns about the differences between discourse communities and how to bring basic writers into a new circle of academic writing.
Fleckenstein, Kristie S. Vision, Rhetoric and Social Action in the Classroom. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2009. Reviewed by Tara Moreno.
Fleckenstein fails to clearly define what social action has to do with the composition classroom until the very end of the book.
Kolln, Martha, and Loretta Gray. Rhetorical Grammar: Grammatical Choices, Rhetorical Effects. 6th ed. NY: Longman, 2010. Reviewed by Melodie Barker.
What makes the book different from traditional grammar books is that it draws on discoveries from composition researchers and linguists and uses a rhetorical point of view to explain grammar.
Mao, LuMing, and Morris Young. Representations: Doing Asian American Rhetoric. Utah: Utah State University Press, 2008. Reviewed by Becky Woolever.
The purpose of the book was to counter the elimination, or as the authors state “institutional forgetting” of a culture and its practices.
Otte, George, and Rebecca Mlynarczyk. Basic Writing. West Lafayette, IN: Parlor Press, 2010. Reviewed by Joshua Dugas.
the authors’ choice to reexamine [basic writing] in comparison to the English field and external factors bodes well.
Rice, Jeff. The Rhetoric of Cool: Composition Studies and New Media. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2007. Reviewed by Kim Clark.
This book is definitely suitable for any serious instructor looking to understand why incorporating digital media into the writing curriculum is important.
By naming-- or at least attempting to name-- feminist composition theory, Siebler is moving the discourse forward.
Smit illustrates just how vital it is that a new approach to teaching composition be developed and implemented.
Tinberg, Howard, and Jean-Paul Nadeau. The Community College Writer: Exceeding Expectations. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2010. Reviewed by Gia Huff.
the answers to the questions the authors posed were so interspersed throughout the book that I’m not even sure if they answered them all.