The purpose of this survey is to gather First Year Writing faculty opinion on our textbooks. We will use this data to make new recommendations. Thank you very much for participating; it's really helpful and should take only a few minutes.
Please go through the survey and only respond to those textbooks you have actually used, here or elsewhere. At the end are two places to provide more details for any texts about which you feel strongly (+ or -), and to provide recommendations of other texts. Emily and the textbook review committee appreciate your insight and suggestions in the decision-making process.
The 100 book, _Made with Words_ is not included here -- 100 faculty will receive an independent survey on various aspects of the course and curriculum, including the text.
The following texts are those that are currently recommended for ENWR105 College Writing I: Intellectual Prose
I have used EMERGING: CONTEMPORARY READINGS FOR WRITERS (Barrios) and I
I have used ACTING OUT CULTURE: READING AND WRITING (Miller) and I
I have used READING OUR WORLD (Yagelski) and I
I have used FROM INQUIRY TO ACADEMIC WRITING (Greene and Lidinsky) and I
I have used CHANGING SOCIETY (Schwab and Love) and I
The following texts are those that are currently recommended for ENWR106 College Writing II: Writing and Literary Study.
I have used MAKING LITERATURE MATTER (Schilb and Clifford) and I:
I have used MAKING ARGUMENTS ABOUT LITERATURE (Schilb and Clifford) and I
I have used LITERATURE: THE HUMAN EXPERIENCE(Abcarian, Klotz, and Cohen) and I:
I have used THE NORTON INTRODUCTION TO LITERATURE, SHORTER 9TH EDITION (Booth, Hunter, and Mays) and I:
The following handbook is currently recommended:
I have used A WRITER'S REFERENCE (Hacker) and I:
Do you think the custom A Writer's Reference is a useful text to require of all First Year Writing students (ENWR 100, 105, and 106)?
Please offer text recommendations for any of the courses. Just make sure the recommendations fit our program. Thank you. no answer
Please add details for any text about which you feel strongly, listing its strengths and weaknesses. We are particularly interested to hear why you do not recommend a text or are ambivalent. Please mention the text by name in your response as your answer here is not linked to your answers on the rest of the survey. Reading Our World by Yagelski was an excellent selection with well thought out topics and readings. This text has a great philosophy that was maintained throughout and which enabled me to discuss not only a reading’s topic, but also the art of writing and the decisions that writers make while creating and revising their work. Chapters 1 and 3 were invaluable because they laid the groundwork of good writing by introducing students to the Rhetorical Situation, which was well represented throughout the text by the consistently used color-coded glosses and grouped questions which allowed students to review material, challenge their ideas, and engage in critical thinking/research. Finally, since some of my students were struggling financially throughout the semester, being able to find all of the readings online and supplementing those versions with reserve texts and their friends’ books enabled them to only purchase the Hacker Handbook.
This has been my second favorite text at MSU -- Kathleen McCormick's being my favorite.
Thank you for your time. After using your results to revise recommendations for textbooks for the next year, we will also share them so you can use your colleagues' opinions to guide you. If a book is judged to be poor by the majority of respondents, we drop it from the list. We anticipate that some of the books will be dropped by publishers -- in which case we'll have to find replacements.
