Course Match

Odyssey: From Paragraph to Essay, 4/e

BASIC APPROACH

(Note: This textbook was published by our college division for use by students at post-secondary institutions whose writing skills are below the level needed to succeed in college English. Please review this text carefully to ensure appropriateness of content for your students.)

Odyssey focuses on helping students build paragraph and essay writing skills while treating the writing process as a voyage of self-discovery, confidence building, and competence building.

As with most traditional paragraph to essay writing books, Odyssey starts out with a thorough overview of the writing process, introduces the various patterns of development, then demonstrates each pattern of development with various essay samples. Parts IV–VI focus on improving grammar and paragraph development. The book concludes with an anthology of readings that are intended to take students on a "reading odyssey," where selections cross genres and professions.

To further emphasize the progression of the exercise sets, all exercises have been reorganized and streamlined in the fourth edition. Students will find newly titled "Comprehension and Practice" exercises that begin with a focus on fundamental concepts and then move into invention and the writing of short pieces. Students can then proceed to "Challenge" exercises that call for critical thinking, drafting, and revision. Interspersed throughout these questions sets are "Collaboration" exercises, which are ideal for pairs and/or groups of students. Grammar, mechanics, and punctuation chapters conclude with "Chapter Quick Check" and "Summary Editing" exercises that test students understanding of all the grammar and sentence skills they have learned.

FEATURES

• Four-color design that engages students visually and facilitates comprehension of key concepts. Conscientious effort has been made to ensure that the application of color in the fourth edition is not merely aesthetic, but pedagogically purposeful.
• Self-contained chapters to accommodate diverse instructor and student needs and preferences.
• Engaging and realistic writing samples that provide practical models and generate topics for class discussion.
• Simple diagrams as well as full-color charts that offer graphic representations of key relationships among patterns of development, parts of speech, sentence elements, and so forth to assist visual learners.
• "Getting Started: Q & A" that gets students comfortable with the chapter material and emphasizes learning as a process of inquiry; showcases students' most frequently asked questions about writing and the writing process.
• "Fast Facts" that supplement chapter content and inspire student writing with informational bits related to language, literature, or creativity.
• "Recaps" that provide graphic summaries of key terms and concepts.
• "ESL Notes" that cross-references to and reinforces concepts covered in Appendix A: Tips for ESL writers.

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