Best books to use in an intro comp/rhet course?

[perrykm2]

Anyone have any suggestions, especially anyone who has already had to teach this type of course?

[TripWillis]

Anyone have any suggestions, especially anyone who has already had to teach this type of course?

I'm confused; is it an intro to composition and rhetoric theory course, or just a composition course?

Last year, I used the 50 Essays portable anthology and supplemented it with a packet of additional essays I liked. We also require Diana Hacker's A Writer's Reference, though I didn't teach that much stuff out of it; I more taught them how to use it themselves and did some of the lessons from the beginning very early in the semester. I would've used The Writers Presence, but since I work at a commuter campus, we are encouraged to use less expensive books, and that one is kind of a monster.

In English 2 I have been using The Craft of Research, some essays, some poems, a short story, and a novel.

[kikalique87]

First I would check with the department or other grad students to see if there is a department required text (my dept has a required department written book and we can then use a text from an approved list to supplement).

I was forced to use John Trimbur's The Call to Write my first semester, and I did not have much success with it. It's big, expensive, and the students don't respond to it. I've used my own course pack every semester since then, but I love Everything's an Argument (Andrea Lunsford), Convergences (Robert Atwan), and They Say/I Say (Graff and Birkenstein). It really depends though on what your course theme is. Are you planning on going a pop culture route, or do you want to teach strictly writing (Writing About Writing is a new text for that)?

Be sure to check out the publisher websites. Bedford-St. Martin's, McGraw-Hill, Pearson, and W.W. Norton publish some great readers and textbooks. You can find your campus rep and order review copies for free from them.

[ComeBackZinc]

Same question as above: an first year comp class, or an introduction to rhetoric and composition?

[hermia11]

If we're talking teaching writing/comp, I use two required texts - Hacker's A Writer's Reference (mostly for grammar and citation styles) and Gerald Graff & Cathy Birkenstein's They Say/I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing. The latter is an awesome starting place for freshman writing students, particularly those that aren't wild about the thoughts of spending 16 weeks "writing stuff." It hardly looks like a reference text, and is approachable, well-written, and organized into easily-digested tidbits for the students that haven't thought about their own writing and the "moves" academic rhetoric requires.

[perrykm2]

The latter is an awesome starting place for freshman writing students, particularly those that aren't wild about the thoughts of spending 16 weeks "writing stuff." It hardly looks like a reference text, and is approachable, well-written, and organized into easily-digested tidbits for the students that haven't thought about their own writing and the "moves" academic rhetoric requires.

This is exactly what I'm looking for. Thanks.