: Publication

This handbook is a practical guide designed to offer students the means to apply critical thinking to academic writing.

Critical thinking is a challenging term.  Sometimes it is presented in relationship to formal logic, which is too rigid to use as a strategy for writing instruction.  Sometimes critical thinking is made synonymous with analysis, although they can be clearly differentiated as separate cognitive activities.  Sometimes critical thinking is reduced to writing prompts on selected readings, or exemplar asides.

REASON TO WRITE introduces the critical question, a pre-writing strategy that both stipulates a working definition for critical thinking, and, in doing so, reorients the approach to academic writing as fundamentally inquiry-based. Critical thinking provides specific strategies designed to help student writers to work through the relationship between thinking and writing.  When given the opportunity to develop a line of inquiry based upon a question, students not only acquire critical thinking skills, but also the means to be self-corrective in their writing, and to transfer those skills into new contexts.

In three major sections, students are guided through steps that build upon foundational critical thinking skills, and that reinforce academic writing as a practice designed to answer a question, solve a problem, or resolve an issue.s

SECTION I

CRITICAL QUESTION, CONTEXT, DEFINITION 

 CHAPTER 1:  A REASON TO WRITE

• Blinking Cursor Syndrome
• Questions and answers
• The case against the five-paragraph form
• Process vs. final product
• Review

CHAPTER 2:  CRITICAL THINKING

• What’s different about critical thinking?
• Critical thinking and logic
• Critical thinking and academic writing
• Why is critical thinking important?
• The role of curiosity
• The (provisional) case against the writing prompt
• The Critical Question
• Writing is risky business
• Review
• Finding a Critical Question
• Step 1: critical question guide
• Example critical questions

CHAPTER 3:  QUESTIONS IN CONTEXT

• Revising five writing rules
• Review
• The Question Map
• Three Parts to the Question Map
• Example Question Map
• Step 2: question map guide

CHAPTER 4:  SAYING WHAT WE MEAN- MEANING WHAT WE SAY

• Language and Associates
• Metaphor: Words are Slithy Toves
• Guard rails for the tricky bits
• Review
• Ways to define
• Types of Definitions/Examples
• Step 3: ways to define guide
• Example Ways to Define
• The Shortcut

SECTION I IANALYSIS, ORGANIZING PRINCIPLE, ARRANGEMENT

 CHAPTER 5:  PERFORMING ANALYSIS

• Two principles of analysis
• Opinions, facts, and analysis
• Types of analysis: general analysis
• Analysis and roller skating
• Formalist analysis
• Rhetorical analysis
• Review
• Performing analysis
• Step 4: analysis guide
• Example Analysis Guide

CHAPTER 6:  FINDING COMMON GROUND

• The organizing principle
• Exordium: “Yo” or “Lo”?
• Review
• Opening paragraph/organizing principle
• Step 5: Opening and organizing principle guide
• Example opening paragraph/organizing principle guide

CHAPTER 7:  ARRANGEMENT

• Beyond exordium
• Fancy names and functions
• Formatting is fun! --Not.
• Primary and secondary sources: Raw or Cooked
• Review
• The Draft
• Step 6: the draft guide

SECTION I I IRHETORIC, REVISION, PUBLICATION

 CHAPTER 8:  COMMUNICATION AND RHETORIC

• “That’s just rhetoric”
• Appeals
• Fallacies and other follies
• Getting our darned ice cream cone
• Review

CHAPTER 9:  FEEDBACK AND REVISION

• Everyone’s a critic
• On Beyond Spellcheck: editing vs. revision
• Mirroring documents
• The secret of the hard copy edit
• Revisions
• Step 7: self-diagnostic

CHAPTER 10:  JOINING THE CONVERSATION

• Kinds of writing
• Writing in professional contexts
• Review
• Joining the conversation
• Step 8: publication guidelines
• Sample Undergraduate Conference CFP
• Sample Undergraduate Journal Contribution Form

New edition now available!