College Composition

2020 Edition Our CLEP study guides are different! The College Composition CLEP study guide TEACHES you what you need to know to pass the CLEP test. This study guide is more than just pages of sample test questions. Our easy to understand study guide will TEACH you the information. We've condensed what you need to know into a manageable book - one that will leave you completely prepared to tackle the test. This study guide includes sample test questions that will test your knowledge AND teach you new material. Your College Composition CLEP study guide also includes flashcards that are bound into the back of the book. Use these to memorize key concepts and terms. Anyone can take and pass a CLEP test. What are you waiting for? ****Testimonials****I just wanted to drop you guys a line and tell you that I passed my final CLEP exam last Monday which gives me all of the credits I need to graduate. I have taken 30 credits worth of CLEP exams and I've passed them all by using your study guides. I actually purchased one of your study guides and failed my first test. I didn't fail because of your guide though, I failed because I didn't manage my time effectively and I ran short. I looked at your study guide after failing though, and a lot of the information on your study guide was very relevant to what was on the test. So, I tried again with a different test and a different study guide of yours. I passed. This pattern continues for 30 credits. I graduate on June 9th thanks to you guys, so I wanted to say thank you. The guides were worth every penny. Thanks, -John S.****I would like to thank you for your study guides. I will be graduating in December with two bachelor degrees and CLEP helped me get there quickly. I gained 36 credits through CLEP and your study guides helped me through almost all of them. I can honestly say that I would not have passed many of the tests without your guides. Great products. Thanks!! -Erin W.****

"Access the REA Study Center at www.REA.com/StudyCenter"--Back Cover.

This second edition of Fundamental College Composition: A Grammar and Style Guide (FCC: AGSG), contains nine new chapters designed to further assist college students in their journey to become clear and precise writers of English. College classrooms--even college level English courses themselves--often overlook the teaching of fundamental writing. Consequently, students may acquire content knowledge, but often lack the language skills necessary to either demonstrate or apply that knowledge. College-level study exposes students to ideas that are complex. A cursory study of grammar and the rules of basic language arts give students the tools they need to express complex ideas clearly and persuasively. FCC: AGSG provides systematic lessons that progressively build the students' understanding of the clarity and efficacy of language. Acquiring knowledge certainly deserves possession of the language skills to express it. Without those skills, education does not meet its primary objective. FCC: AGSG was written to assure exposure to those skills. REVIEWS and WORDS of PRAISE This book is a great guide for student writers. It concisely and clearly presents useful style and grammar techniques. I assign it in all my writing classes, and my students swear by it. I even used it as a reference when I wrote my first textbook. Anyone who uses this book will become a better writer. ---Thomas A. Miller, J.D., Associate Professor, Justice and Law Administration, Western Connecticut State University, co-author of Business Law: Foundations for the 21st Century Fundamental College Composition provides a concise and accessible explanation of grammar components and importance. DeFeo’s prose is fluid and an excellent style example for writers to model. All writers should memorize this quote from the text, "Electronic, immediate, thoughtless communication has tainted the substructures of academic, formal written communication." ---Deanna Schaab, Adjunct Professor, Western Connecticut State University. This is a textbook aimed at improving the language skills of its readers. Written with humor and a broad vocabulary, it entertains as it educates. It will give today's students a deeper understanding of the basic rules and structure of the English language and improve skills that are often overlooked during their academic careers. Anyone looking to improve their language skills whether in an academic setting, the workplace, or one's personal life will benefit from reading this text. --Roseanne Shea, J.D., Professor, Attorney at Law, Legal Reference Librarian at the Haas Library, Western Connecticut State University, Danbury Fundamental College Composition has accomplished the near impossible--it has made writing instruction for the college student accessible and easy to understand. The book's concise and informative 12 chapters will be a welcome addition to the undergraduate curriculum of any post-secondary institution. The content reflects the author's many years of teaching writing to students and highlights what he considers the main pitfalls in student writing. To that end Professor DeFeo's longest chapter, “Punctuation”, identifies a key villain to poor composition. The book removes the mystery that adorns most pedagogical approaches to college level writing instruction and sets a path for student improvement of this most critical of communication skills. --Terrence P. Dwyer, J.D., Professor, Western Connecticut State University. Author of Legal Issues in Homeland Security – U.S. Supreme Court Cases, Commentary, and Questions (2014, Loose Leaf Law Publications, Inc.) Professor DeFeo's Fundamental College Composition is an invaluable tool for the college student, academic, executive, and anyone else who needs to improve their writing skills. As his Foreword reveals, DeFeo's text is laced with subtle humor and moments of delightful insight. All of us need help with writing, at least occasionally. This highly accessible book will nourish the careful and determined reader who puts forth the effort to learn. --Peter Weston Wood, author of To Swallow a Toad (1987, Donald I. Fine, Inc.). Guest columnist, The New York Times, The Jersey City Journal In the first edition of Fundamental College Composition William DeFeo provided undergraduate students with a concise but thorough exposition on the habits and tools of being a good writer. Professor DeFeo has now expanded on what is going to become a classic of college writing instruction. Seven new chapters and a prior chapter expanded into two updated individual chapters add to this engaging and straight-forward approach to establishing solid writing skills. As he did in the First Edition with his chapter “Punctuation,” Professor DeFeo in this new edition has added an important chapter on “Verb Tenses and Moods.” This is another culprit of poor composition that has perpetually plagued the college writer. After reading Professor DeFeo’s expanded Second Edition to Fundamental College Composition there can be no excuse for failing to present clear and flowing syntax. --Terrence P. Dwyer, J.D., Professor, Western Connecticut State University, columnist and author

An increasing number of students graduate from U.S. high schools and enter college while still in the process of learning English. This group--the "1.5 generation"--consisting of immigrants and U.S. residents born abroad as well as indigenous language minority groups, is rapidly becoming a major constituency in college writing programs. These students defy the existing categories in most college writing programs, and in the research literature. Experienced in American culture and schooling, they have characteristics and needs distinct from the international students who have been the subject of most research and literature on ESL writing. Furthermore, in studies of mainstream college composition, basic writing, and diversity, these students' status as second-language learners is usually left unaddressed or even misconstrued as underpreparation. Nevertheless, research and pedagogical writings have yet to take up the particular issues entailed in teaching composition to this student population. The intent in this volume is to bridge this gap and to initiate a dialogue on the linguistic, cultural, and ethical issues that attend teaching college writing to U.S.-educated linguistically diverse students. This book is the first to address explicitly issues in the instruction of "1.5 generation" college writers. From urban New York City to midwestern land grant universities to the Pacific Rim, experienced educators and researchers discuss a variety of contexts, populations, programs, and perspectives. The 12 chapters in this collection, authored by prominent authorities in non-native language writing, are research based and conceptual, providing a research-based survey of who the students are, their backgrounds and needs, and how they are placed and instructed in a variety of settings. The authors frame issues, raise questions, and provide portraits of language minority students and the classrooms and programs that serve them. Together, the pieces paint the landscape of college writing instruction for 1.5 generation students and explore the issues faced by ESL and college writing programs in providing appropriate writing instruction to second-language learners arriving from U.S. high schools. This book serves not only to articulate an issue and set an agenda for further research and discussion, but also to suggest paths toward linguistic and cultural sensitivity in any writing classroom. It is thought-provoking reading for college administrators, writing teachers, and scholars and students of first- and second-language composition.

Composition in the University examines the required introductory course in composition within American colleges and universities. Crowley argues that due to its association with literary studies in English departments, composition instruction has been inappropriately influenced by humanist pedagogy and that modern humanism is not a satisfactory rationale for the study of writing. Crowley envisions possible nonhumanist rationales that could be developed for vertical curricula in writing instruction, were the universal requirement not in place. Composition in the University examines the required introductory course in composition within American colleges and universities. According to Sharon Crowley, the required composition course has never been conceived in the way that other introductory courses have been--as an introduction to the principles and practices of a field of study. Rather it has been constructed throughout much of its history as a site from which larger educational and ideological agendas could be advanced, and such agendas have not always served the interests of students or teachers, even though they are usually touted as programs of study that students "need." If there is a master narrative of the history of composition, it is told in the institutional attitude that has governed administration, design, and staffing of the course from its beginnings--the attitude that the universal requirement is in place in order to construct docile academic subjects. Crowley argues that due to its association with literary studies in English departments, composition instruction has been inappropriately influenced by humanist pedagogy and that modern humanism is not a satisfactory rationale for the study of writing. She examines historical attempts to reconfigure the required course in nonhumanist terms, such as the advent of communications studies during the 1940s. Crowley devotes two essays to this phenomenon, concentrating on the furor caused by the adoption of a communications program at the University of Iowa. Composition in the University concludes with a pair of essays that argue against maintenance of the universal requirement. In the last of these, Crowley envisions possible nonhumanist rationales that could be developed for vertical curricula in writing instruction, were the universal requirement not in place. Crowley presents her findings in a series of essays because she feels the history of the required composition course cannot easily be understood as a coherent narrative since understandings of the purpose of the required course have altered rapidly from decade to decade, sometimes in shockingly sudden and erratic fashion. The essays in this book are informed by Crowley's long career of teaching composition, administering a composition program, and training teachers of the required introductory course. The book also draw on experience she gained while working with committees formed by the Conference on College Composition and Communication toward implementation of the Wyoming Resolution, an attempt to better the working conditions of post-secondary teachers of writing.

This text is a transformation of Writing for Success, a text adapted by The Saylor Foundation under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License without attribution as requested by the work's original creator or licensee. Kathryn Crowther, Lauren Curtright, Nancy Gilbert, Barbara Hall, Tracienne Ravita, and Kirk Swenson adapted this text under a grant from Affordable Learning Georgia to Georgia Perimeter College (GPC, now part of Georgia State University) in 2015. Section 1.3 was authored by Rebecca Weaver. This text is a revision of a prior adaptation of Writing for Success led by Rosemary Cox in GPC's Department of English, titled Successful College Writing for GPC Students (2014, 2015).Georgia Northwestern Technical College adapted this textbook for English 1101.Georgia Northwestern Technical College is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and SchoolsCommission on Colleges to award associate degrees.You can see the latest version at https://oer.galileo.usg.edu/english-textbooks/8/