I am excited to announce the release of Essential Actions for Academic Writing, co-authored with Ann Johns and published by the University of Michigan Press.
Essential Actions is a textbook for novice writers: students who are just starting their journey in (English) academic writing. Through a genre-based, research-informed, language-focused, rhetorical approach, we guide writers through the essential actions of academic writing: explaining, summarizing, synthesizing, reporting and interpreting data, arguing, analyzing, and responding. Each action is embedded in meaningful genres and contexts, both academic and beyond the classroom. Finally, teachers can choose from four extended, scaffolded projects that show how academic writers navigate among multiple actions and genres.
Essential Actions is suitable for ESL/EAP classes as well as monolingual and multilingual writing classes and can be used in intensive English programs, community colleges, developmental writing programs, first-year composition classes, and graduate preparation courses.
A teacher’s guide and other resources (including an entire extra chapter on source-based writing that we couldn’t fit in the book!) are available on the companion website.
For more information, please take a look at my post on the Michigan blog or visit the publisher’s page to purchase (print or ebook) or request an exam copy. Essential Actions is also sold by Amazon (print and Kindle format) and VitalSource (textbook rentals).
If you have any questions about teaching the book in your course, or to arrange a workshop for your colleagues, please don’t hesitate to contact me!
Nigel Caplan 