College Writing Skills uses explanation, demonstration, and practice to teach skills essential to success in college writing. For this course Peder Jones and Jay Farness have constructed a framework of rhetoric—work in composing paragraphs and essays—around disciplined study of sentences and words. The authors have sought in each section of the book to combine the most useful features of contemporary and traditional approaches to college English. Their overall aim is to enable the beginning college writer to compose clear and effective sentences, paragraphs, and compositions.

This new edition of College Writing Skills is a refinement of the four previous editions; it has been shaped by helpful comments from students and instructors who have used the course. Exercises have been updated, and many minor changes for clarity have been made.

Basic features of this text have not changed, however. As a hybrid of textbook and workbook, it continues to stress focused practice leading to directed independent composing activities; it emphasizes student writing rather than students reading about writing. This emphasis translates into more than 500 sets of exercises, more than 100 optional workshop activities, and an Appendix covering special problems in the acquisition of English. The exercises in this textbook embody our belief that practice is crucial to improving one's writing skills. Accordingly, this text provides practice in forming ideas, in getting ideas our one's head and onto paper, in experimenting with various sentence structures in order to achieve clarity, in following models of correct grammar and effective style, and in making the writing process pay off through effective revision and editing.
A Collegiate Press book