Models for Writers with 2021 MLA Update

* indicates a chapter, section, or reading selection that is new to this edition.

Thematic Clusters
Introduction for Students

Part One: On Reading and Writing Well

Chapter 1: The Writing Process
       Prewriting
       Writing the First Draft
        Revising
        Editing
        Proofreading
        Writing a Narrative Essay: A Student Essay in Progress
        *Mya Nunnally, Mixed Results (student essay)

Chapter 2: Reading Actively and Critically
       Reading Actively: Getting a Basic Understanding of the Essay
       *Celeste Headlee, Get Off the Soapbox
       *Reading Critically: Taking Your Analysis to the Next Level
       From Reading to Writing
       Writing from Reading: A Sample Student Essay
       Zoe Ockenga, The Excuse "Not To" (student essay)

Part Two: The Elements of the Essay

Chapter 3: Thesis
       James Lincoln Collier, Anxiety: Challenge by Another Name
       David Pogue, The End of Passwords
       Julie Zhuo, Where Anonymity Breeds Contempt

Chapter 4: Unity
       Thomas L. Friedman, My Favorite Teacher
       Helen Keller, The Most Important Day
       Jonathan Safran Foer, Against Meat

Chapter 5: Organization
       Cherokee Paul McDonald, A View from the Bridge
       *Tim Parks, Do We Write Differently on a Screen?
       Dan M. Kahan, Shame Is Worth a Try

Chapter 6: Beginnings and Endings
       Dick Gregory, Shame
       Sean McElwee, The Case for Censoring Hate Speech
       Omar Akram, Can Music Bridge Cultures and Promote Peace?

Chapter 7: Paragraphs
       Judith Ortiz Cofer, My Rosetta
       Donna Hicks, Independence
       *Sarah Smarsh, Heartland

Chapter 8: Transitions
       Dan Shaughnessy, Teammates Forever Have a Special Connection
       *Pamela Paul, Let Children Get Bored Again
       Richard Lederer, The Case for Short Words

Chapter 9: Effective Sentences
       Erin Murphy, White Lies
       *Pablo Casals, San Salvador
       Langston Hughes, Salvation

Chapter 10: Writing with Sources
       Tara Haelle, How to Teach Children That Failure Is the Secret to Success
       *Markham Heid, We Need to Talk About Kids and Smartphones
       Jake Jamieson, The English-Only Movement: Can America Proscribe Language with a Clear Conscience?

Part Three: The Language of the Essay

*Chapter 11: Voice
       *Brooklyn White, A Pleasure to Burn: One Familys Hot-Sauce Heirloom
       *Wilfred McClay, Curate
       Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists

Chapter 12: Diction and Tone
       David Sedaris, Me Talk Pretty One Day
       Maya Angelou, Momma, the Dentist, and Me
       Robert G. Lake-Thom (Medicine Grizzly Bear), An Indian Fathers Plea

Chapter 13: Figurative Language
       Robert Ramirez, The Barrio
       *Trish OKane, Of Fledglings and Freshmen
       Audrey Schulman, Fahrenheit 59: What a Childs Fever Might Tell Us about Climate Change

Part Four: Types of Essays

Chapter 14: Illustration
       Natalie Goldberg, Be Specific
       Michael Gardner, Adventures of the Dork Police
       *Priscilla Long, Old Things, Used Things

Chapter 15: Narration
       Henry Louis Gates Jr., Whats in a Name?
       Misty Copeland, Life in Motion
       *Grace Talusan, The Gentle Tasaday

Chapter 16: Description
       Eudora Welty, The Corner Store
       *David Jenemann, The Gloves of Summer
       *Mia Schon, Look It Up!

Chapter 17: Process Analysis
       Paul Merrill, The Principles of Poor Writing
       Marie Kondo, Designate a Place for Each Thing
       *Helen Czerski, Spiders Legs Are Hydraulic Masterpieces

Chapter 18: Definition
       *Brené Brown, What Is Shame?
       Akemi Johnson, Who Gets to Be "Hapa"?
       Eduardo Porter, What Happiness Is

Chapter 19: Division and Classification
       Martin Luther King Jr., The Ways of Meeting Oppression
       Mia Consalvo, Cheating Is Good for You
       Amy Tan, Mother Tongue

Chapter 20: Comparison and Contrast
       Toby Morris, On a Plate
       Bharati Mukherjee, Two Ways to Belong in America
       *Tara Westover, Pygmalion

Chapter 21: Cause and Effect
       Stephen King, Why We Crave Horror Movies
       Brent Staples, Black Men and Public Space
       *Melinda Wenner Moyer, Sexism Starts in Childhood

Chapter 22: Argument
       Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, Becoming Disabled
       Mary Sherry, In Praise of the F Word
       *Farhad Manjoo, Its Time for "They"
       *Is College Worth the Cost?
       *Ellen Ruppel Shell, College May Not Be Worth It Anymore
       *Logan Smith, Think for Yourself and Question the Benefits of Higher Education
       *Peter Cappelli, Will College Pay Off?
       *How Real Is the Automation Threat?
       *Alissa Quart, Automation Is a Real Threat
       *Lawrence Whittle, I, For One, Welcome Our Robot Overlords
       *Hettie OBrien, The Automation Delusion

Part Five: Guides to Research and Editing

Chapter 23: A Brief Guide to Writing a Research Paper
       Establishing a Realistic Schedule
       Finding and Using Sources
       Conducting Keyword Searches
       Evaluating Sources
       Analyzing Sources for Position and Bias
       Developing a Working Bibliography
       Taking Notes
       Documenting Sources
       MLA-Style Documentation
       APA-Style Documentation

Chapter 24: Editing for Grammar, Punctuation, and Sentence Style
       Run-Ons: Fused Sentences and Comma Splices
       Sentence Fragments
       Subject-Verb Agreement
       Pronoun-Antecedent Agreement
       Verb Tense Shifts
       Misplaced and Dangling Modifiers
       Faulty Parallelism
       Weak Nouns and Verbs
       Academic Diction and Tone
       ESL Concerns (Articles and Nouns)

Glossary of Useful Terms
Acknowledgments
Index

The ebook has been updated to give your students the latest guidance on documenting sources in MLA style and follows the guidelines set forth in the MLA Handbook, 9th edition (April 2021).

Now with Achieve, including new writing tools. Achieve puts student writing at the center of your course and keeps revision at the core, with a dedicated composition space that guides students through drafting, peer review, source check, reflection, and revision. Developed to support best practices in commenting on student drafts, Achieve is a flexible, integrated suite of tools for designing and facilitating writing assignments, paired with actionable insights that make students’ progress towards outcomes clear and measurable. Fully editable pre-built assignments support the book’s approach, and an e-book is included, along with adaptive quizzing and auto-scored reading comprehension quizzes for all of the readings in Models for Writers.

24 new, accessible essays on engaging topics. More than one-third of the readings in the thirteenth edition are new, and 20 of which are essays published since 2016. The new selections feature topical themes and a range of diverse perspectives from writers such as:

• Tara Westover on the transition from her isolated, rural family to graduate school at Cambridge University in "Pygmalion," a selection from her memoir Educated.
• Markham Heid on the social and psychological effects of smartphones on children and teens.
• Farhad Manjoo on the cultural power of the singular, gender-neutral they in "Its Time for They."

More attention to critical reading. Chapter 2, Reading Actively and Critically, has been extensively revised in response to instructor feedback. The chapters new organization presents reading as a two-step process: first, students read actively to get a basic understanding of what an author is saying; then they read critically to draw deeper connections. Furthermore, the study questions that follow each reading throughout every chapter of the book have been reorganized so that five Questions for Study and Discussion are followed by three Questions for Critical Reading—a new study sequence that reinforces the way instructors teach reading.

A new chapter on finding one’s voice. New Chapter 11 explains the significance and power of voice, defined as the writers personality as expressed on the written page. The chapter offers examples of compelling voices in professional writing, as well as helpful advice for student writers seeking to discover and express their own voices.

Two timely new thematic argument casebooks in Chapter 22. The three authors in the first casebook, "Is College Worth the Cost?," examine the problem of rising higher education fees and debate whether college is worth the financial investment. In the second casebook, "How Real Is the Automation Threat?," three authors consider the recent trend of jobs lost to automation and offer differing perspectives on the severity of the crisis and possible solutions.

A new student essay in Chapter 1 that guides students through the writing process. The new essay-in-progress — about hair and its connection to race and identity — guides students from the thesis to outlining to the final essay.

Updated APA coverage. A dedicated section in Chapter 23, "A Brief Guide to Writing a Research Paper," aligns formatting and citation examples with the 2020 American Psychological Association guidelines.

A new Students Companion for Models for Writers that provides additional support. This guide offers robust help for students in ALP or corequisite courses and helps beginning college writers develop on-level skills. Coverage includes time management, writing activities in the rhetorical patterns, sentence guides, and additional grammar help.