Fundamental College Composition

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

This OER textbook has been designed for students to learn the foundational concepts for English 100 (first-year college composition). The content aligns to learning outcomes across all campuses in the University of Hawai'i system. It was designed, written, and edited during a three day book sprint in May, 2019.

Fundamentals of College Composition (FCC) is a compact, college level writing text that presents the underlying grammatical structures of Standard American English in a format that is understandable without prior formal grammar training. The book's purpose is to improve the clarity and precision of undergraduate writing. College instructors know that far too many undergraduates write poorly. University English departments teach literature, not fundamental writing; university writing departments teach higher level creative-commercial writing, not fundamental writing. Other disciplines must focus on teaching course content, and have precious little time to devote to improving their undergraduate's composition skills. A popular reaction to the undergraduate writing dilemma has been to institute discipline-specific writing classes. These classes tailor writing assignments to their particular disciplines, and a wide array of specialized writing texts are being published to meet the needs of these specialty writing courses. Often, Strunk and White's Elements of Style (ES) is used as a companion to these texts. ES is an excellent volume, but it was written in 1908 for a classification of students who possessed solid foundations in formal grammar studies. Twenty first century undergraduates no longer possess those foundations and a text that presumes they do fails despite its distinguished and noble history. FCC is designed to address this "grammatical gap." It provides a sub-structure of grammar study sufficient to bring a modern student to a basic understanding of the foundations of compositional language arts. It confronts struggling writers with their compositional shortcomings, presents them with a kit of fundamental grammatical tools, explains the tools' purposes and functions, and invites students to write, revise, and re-write in short bursts of directed prose. It avoids every intricacy of grammatical science that does not apply directly and practically to the production of clear, concise sentences and structured paragraphs. Good writing requires labor. FCC imposes the burden of good writing equally on student and instructor. Writing, revising and re-writing are obligations placed squarely on the student, but they are of little consequence without the pointed, deliberate, and supportive correction of the instructor. FCC coordinates these student-instructor efforts and provides a base of writing information and a spectrum of writing activities that will build tangible writing skills.

Brings together writing researchers & educators to identify & explore the linguistic, ethical, & cultural issues that attend teaching college writing to US-educated, linguistically diverse students. Three sections focus on students, classrooms,& programs

terrorism in each phase of its development. It provides an historical journey across the terrorist landscape and offers insights and analyses of the successive challenges that terrorists have posed. The narrative shifts from the Assassins of medieval times to the nihilists of Tsarist Russia to the left-wing, Marxist-oriented terrorist organizations of the Cold War era to the more recent Islamist-based groups, including their respective supporters and enablers: the Palestinians, Russia and the Soviet bloc, and Iran. More than 20 years have elapsed since the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. A new generation has grown up with little or no knowledge of these horrific events and the warning signs that preceded them. Moreover, the Covid-19 pandemic, unprecedented political polarization, the growing focus on climate change and social justice and, most recently, the war in Ukraine have relegated the threat of terrorism to the back burner of U.S. national priorities. But Americans must remain vigilant for danger signs that could portend a new terrorist strike. A valuable resource for both specialists and general readers, The Scourge of Terrorism also posits that counterterrorism in the post-9/11 and post-Afghanistan era requires new strategies to supplant the primarily military approach of the past. WORDS OF PRAISE The Scourge of Terrorism is a timely reminder that politically and religiously motivated acts of violence have deep roots in history and will remain a permanent factor in international affairs. While motives and targets shift over time, innocents who suffer are always the victims. The author makes a valuable contribution by discussing new strategies for understanding and countering terrorist threats in the future. The book is highly recommended for laymen and experts alike. --Benjamin Fischer, former Chief Historian of the CIA Marian Leighton’s new book on terrorism is a must read for the counter-terrorism community. Her book will help this community better understand root causes of terrorism and identify warning signs of political violence. Her book is also a persuasive counterpoint for those ill-advised foreign policymakers who keep telling us all to pivot away from global terrorism and focus instead on China and Russia. --Dr. Leif Rosenberger was a former counterterrorism official at the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and is currently a governance advisor in the Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute (PKSOI) at the US Army War College. Throughout human history, groups of individuals have been subjected to violence from competing forces, whether in war or in more limited, even controlled, assaults, currently termed terrorism. Marian Leighton, with decades of experience as an intelligence community analyst, follows the development of terrorism from its roots as a localized attempt to harass a neighboring tribe or community to its current version as an international force capable of utilizing improvements in weaponry that enhance the effect such ventures have on their victims. While flying airliners into civilian buildings can be more dramatic and take many more lives than would butchering a local tribe, the immediate result of the attack may not always be more effective in striking at the emotional heart of the target group. In examining the progression of terrorism through the ages, Dr. Leighton offers a closer examination of its impact and potential in this more mobile and technologically sophisticated era. --Richard R. Valcourt, Editor-in-Chief Emeritus, International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence A remarkably comprehensive study, packed with new information and brimming with the wise insights of an intelligence practitioner. Every national security official should read it. --Toby Harnden, author of First Casualty: The Untold Story of the CIA Mission to Avenge 9/11

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/