Full Description
Academic Acts provides a streamlined approach to academic writing by exploring three crucial acts - summary, analysis, and synthesis - while covering the basic skills that students need to read, write, and research effectively. Act I describes the conventions of academic and non-academic writing and the stages of writing. Act II provides step-by-step guidelines for writing different types of summaries and includes a chapter on how to write concisely. Act III focuses on critical thinking and rhetorical analysis. Act IV provides guidelines for integrating quotations and paraphrase, MLA and APA documentation style, and includes an annotated student research paper. The five readings at the end of the book illustrate different genres of writing across the disciplines, focusing on topics of interest to today's students.
Contents
Preface
Introduction: On Academic Writing
Act I Foundations of Academic Writing
1: The Interrelated Skills of Thinking, Reading, and Writing
2: Purpose and Audience
3: The Conventions of Academic Writing
4: Stages of Writing
5: Research
6: Essay Writing
7: A Grammar Primer
Act II Summary
8: Summarizing: An Everyday Skill
9: Summary as Overview: The Abstract
10: The Complete Picture: Extended Summaries
11: A Broader Focus: Annotated Bibliographies
12: Summaries, Research, and Your Writing
13: Less Is More: Strategies for Concise Writing
Act III Analysis
14: What Is Critical Thinking?
15: Engaging with a Text
16: Rhetorical Analysis of an Argument
17: Analyzing Weak and Misleading Arguments
18: Examples of Arguments
Act IV Synthesis
19: To Quote or Not to Quote: How to Use Your Sources
20: An Introduction to Citation Styles
21: Getting Down to It: Outlining and Composing
22: A Case Study: A Student Research Paper
Readings
"Managing the Modern Infodemic" by Nancy Tomes
"Stop Whitewashing Our National History" by Tayo Bero
"The Case for Semicolons" by Lauren Oyler
"Cybervictimization among Pre-Adolescents in a Community-Based Sample in Canada: Prevalence & Predictors" (Excerpt) by Ahmad Mobin, Cindy Xin Feng, and Cory Neudorf
"The Social Price of Constant Connectivity: Smartphones Impose Subtle Costs on Well-Being" by Kostadin Kushlev, Ryan Dwyer, and Elizabeth W. Dunn
Glossary
Index
