Description

College Culture, Student Success helps students develop reading, writing, and thinking skills as well as become familiar with the common customs, underlying assumptions, and strategies for success associated with being a college student.

 

This brief, flexible, and contemporary reader explores topics familiar to many of today's college students, including being a first-generation college student, balancing college and work, recognizing different learning styles, taking responsibility for one's education, and experiencing campus life.  Students will become more knowledgeable about the larger community they are joining and better understand some of the experiences of their peers even as they reflect on their own experiences, assumptions, and motivation.

 

Apparatus that invites students to bring their own experiences to an interpretation, recognize how authors make use of rhetorical techniques, make thematic connections across multiple readings, and conduct research on the Web ensures that College Culture, Student Success is particularly effective in composition courses.

Features

• Timely issues that resonate with today's students are explored, including distance learning, bilingualism, social networking, writing for the Web, learning disabilities, single parenting, and plagiarism.
• Professional and student writers bring a wide range of perspectives that particularly speak to the experiences of non-traditional students.
• Pre-reading questions help students practice the skills of previewing and predicting:
  • Making It Matter questions ask students to search their own backgrounds for what they already know about a topic and create a context for what they are about to learn in the reading.
  • Breaking It Down questions encourage students to consider how rhetorical modes and specific writing techniques are employed in the piece
• Questions for Writing and Discussion after each reading provide an opportunity for students to think critically about what they have read and how it relates to them as college students while also investigating and practicing the different rhetorical modes.
• Making Connections questions at the end of each chapter invite students to compare and contrast rhetorical approaches and points of view so that they wrestle with diverse ideas and strategies as they practice analytical skills.
• An Exploring the Web section at the end of each chapter offers online resources for students, including information about scholarships, time management, and study skills.
• Half the size and cost of typical readers, “Longman Topics” can be used alone or paired with other texts.

 

Table of Contents

PREFACE

 

RHETORICAL CONTENTS

 

CHAPTER 1. I Wasn't Brought Up That Way: Where Home Culture Meets College Culture

 

                  Overview

                  Joseph H. Suina, “And Then I Went to School”

                  Amy Tan, “Mother Tongue”

                  Alfred Lubrano, "Bricklayer's Boy"

                  Rodrigo Rodriguez, "The Meaning of Work"

                  Thomas Oliphant, “Abandoned, but Not Alone”

                  Ron Suskind, “Let the Colors Run”

                  Making Connections

                  Exploring the Web

 

CHAPTER 2.  A Day in the Life: Opportunities and Challenges In and Out of the Classroom

 

                  Overview

                  Steve Tesich, “Focusing on Friends” 

                  Rebecca Dince, “Could Your Facebook Profile Throw a Wrench in Your Future?” (student)

                  Mindy Sink, “Drinking Deaths Draw Attention to Old Campus Problem”

                  Meghan Daum, “We're Lying: Safe Sex and White Lies in the Time of AIDS”

                  Erin Mallants Rodriguez, “Universities Seeing a Gender Gap in Enrollments”

                  Martin Kramer, “Earning and Learning: Are Students Working Too Much?”

                  Making Connections

                  Exploring the Web

 

CHAPTER 3. Who's in Charge Here? Exploring Self-Awareness and Personal Responsibility

 

                  Overview

                  Julie Gilbert, “ADHD: The Cloud Lifted” (student)

                  Jodi Morse, “Log on to Learn”

                  Ed Finkel, “Sticky Fingers on the Information Superhighway”

                  Paul Graham, “Good and Bad Procrastination”

                  Danielle Barbuto, “From Single Mother to Successful Student” (student)

                  Malcolm X, "Saved"

                  Making Connections

                  Exploring the Web

 

CHAPTER 4. Learning and Unlearning:  Reinventing Yourself as a Learner

 

                  Overview

                  Howard Gardner, “Multiple Intelligences”

                  Paul Roberts, “How to Say Nothing in 500 Words”

                  Mike Rose, "I Just Wanna Be Average"

                  Azar Nafisi, “Upsilamba!”

                  Sheila Tobias, “Symptoms of Math Anxiety”

                  Adam Robinson, “Take this Quiz! (Twenty Reasons You Could Be Working Harder and

                        Longer Than You Have to, Yet Learning Less and Receiving Lower Grades)”

                  Making Connections

                  Exploring the Web

 

CHAPTER 5.  Becoming an Educated Person: Intellectual Curiosity, Integrity and Critical Thinking in

                       College and Beyond  

 

                  Overview

                  Ronald Weisberger, “General Education and a College Degree”

                  Michelle Compton, “The Nontraditional Student in You”

                  Ria Overholt, “Vamos a Leer” (Student)

                  John Seigenthaler, “A False Wikipedia 'Biography'”

                  Perri Klass, “Ambition”

                  Alexandra Robbins and Abby Wilner, “What is the Quarterlife Crisis?”

                  Making Connections

                  Exploring the Web

                 

Credits