SO WHAT? the Writer's Argument, with Readings

So What? teaches students how to write compelling arguments and explains why practicing argumentation is essential to learning and communicating with others. Practical exercises throughout each chapter reinforce this broader academic aim by focusing on the key issue of significance-helping writers answer the "So What?" question for themselves and their audiences. By showing students how their writing fits within the broader context of academic inquiry, So What? encourages them to...
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So What? teaches students how to write compelling arguments and explains why practicing argumentation is essential to learning and communicating with others. Practical exercises throughout each chapter reinforce this broader academic aim by focusing on the key issue of significance-helping writers answer the "So What?" question for themselves and their audiences. By showing students how their writing fits within the broader context of academic inquiry, So What? encourages them to emulate and adapt the authentic academic styles, foundational organizing structures, and helpful rhetorical moves to their college classes and beyond. This version includes readings that demonstrate why student writing matters in academic settings. The readings also provoke students to think about how authentic writing involves a genuine audience, purpose, and context.Short, flexible, and affordable, So What? begins by teaching students how to understand their compositions as contributions within the broader context of college, as important practice in academic inquiry and knowledge making. By teaching students how to become apprentice scholars, So What? gives students access authentic academic styles, foundational organizing structures, and helpful rhetorical moves that they can emulate and adapt in their college classes and beyond. One of the biggest challenges to teaching freshman composition is motivation, or the "So What" factor. Students find themselves writing about something they know or care little about (for example, deeper meanings of Shakespeare) or they write about something that their audience knows or cares little about (such as legalizing marijuana). Both parties are left wondering, so what? Is it any wonder that student writing often lacks energy or purpose? Many textbooks try to solve this lack of authenticity by focusing on argument, based in either technical rhetoric or "real world" persuasion. While these approaches may clarify students' conception of audience, purpose, and context, they don't teach students how academic writing functions or how to produce it-and they don't make academic argument seem any more authentic, useful, or meaningful.