Writing That Makes Sense: Critical Thinking in College Composition

by David S. Hogsette

Students often face a daunting dilemma in academia when it comes to writing. In their composition courses they are encouraged to express their emotions, find themselves, construct their own meanings, discover their voices, and own their identities through writing. But when they are asked to write lab reports, history papers, sociological studies, or to write discipline specific documents for their majors, their professors aren't much interested in self-expression, self-esteem, identity politics, or endlessly open-ended non-answers in search of a question. Their professors want clear writing that makes sense and that evidences critical thinking. What are students to do? Writing That Makes Sense takes students through the basics of the writing process and critical thinking, and it teaches them how to write various types of academic essays they are likely to encounter in their academic careers. Drawing on nearly twenty years of experience in teaching college composition and professional writing, David S. Hogsette combines relevant writing pedagogy and practical assignments with the basics of critical thinking and logical thought to provide students with step-by-step guides for successful writing in academia. Writing That Makes Sense includes many professional essays and articles from a variety of voices often underrepresented in academia today, thus introducing students to a wider intellectual diversity. Students will also benefit from a chapter on information literacy that provides practical tips on engaging the research process and writing research papers.

630 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2009

Reviews

[Cindy Marsch · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have taught college composition classes in five institutions over the years, and David Hogsette is the director of the writing program at Grove City College, where I now teach as a guest lecturer. I had my own choice of texts but have good experience with using whatever is favored by a particular department, so I was willing to begin with this one last year. I'm completing my second semester teaching with this book and will continue with it--I'm intrigued to see the proposed second edition in the future.

The text has the usual expected chapters about rhetorical theory; getting started with brainstorming; forms like comparison, definition, and process; and helps with handling research sources. A significant portion of the text devoted to critical thinking explores logic, but I found it daunting to address appropriately with students who haven't had any logic before--it works best as a refresher for those who remember syllogisms. The section on fallacies is easier to teach, and helpful, and even students who don't have logic training can understand how these work. Because the style sheets like MLA, CMOS, etc. change from time to time, the distinctions on these in the text are necessarily outdated even before printing, though the concept of the differences is quite helpful--our course emphasizes the use of the different styles for different disciplines, and students must practice working in their own disciplines. The strongest feature of this instructional section of the book is in the professional and, to a lesser extent, student samples. I found myself turning to these pages frequently to demonstrate to students a sound technique for transitions or a recurring theme. The culminating assignments in our curriculum are a synthesis essay gathering professional authorities' perspectives and a critical review (for the final exam), and the text guides students well in their preparation for these assignments.

The final third of the text is a reader full of politically/theologically conservative essays on topics mostly of a worldview or current-events interest--America, education, science and faith, ethics, sexuality, abortion, and media. The main distinction of this text over every other college writing text or reader I have ever used is this quite distinctive conservative point of view. In one sense it's quite refreshing, but it has two weaknesses--it feels dated almost a decade after publication (and the "current events" essays sometimes a decade older than that), and it has a distinct preaching-to-the-choir flavor. Grove City College is a good audience for this reader, but my GCC students sometimes felt the overwhelming right-wing perspective suffocating. And the sexuality section feels particularly dated with the lightning-speed development of these topics in recent years. I have to use recent media materials to solve the "datedness" of some things, and this year I have introduced a classic reader, The Art of the Personal Essay: An Anthology from the Classical Era to the Present, to provide some balancing perspectives and a "humanities" element missing from Hogsette's reader. So while Hogsette offers us Larry Elder's delightful little essay "Barbershop," about what it's like for a very conservative black father and son to visit a very liberal black neighborhood barbershop and to share their perspective there, my students also got to read from the other collection James Baldwin's "Notes of a Native Son," and we discussed how and why Elder's father and Baldwin--black men with similar background and of a similar age--could come to such different conclusions in worldview. I hope the proposed update of Hogsette's book will include more up-to-date essays and more balance of perspectives--some of our most fruitful conversations in class come with our consideration of well-written arguments on both sides of an issue.

I would note, too, that my additional reader is not necessarily the best choice for issue essays to balance Hogsette, as it is instead a collection of personal essays--I will be on the lookout for another reader that does the job, though an altered collection in Hogsette's text would be great. Nevertheless, I have had no trouble finding recently-published articles online to supplement Hogsette's reader as well.

Another item on my wish list for a new edition is an index, as it's difficult to pinpoint a particular passage I remember and want to use in class again--rhetorical techniques and examples overlap so much a good transition example could be in the paragraph development section, in the section on organization, or in the fine chapter "What Does An Essay Look Like?"

Anyone weary of unremitting left-wing perspective in college writing texts will find a potent antidote in Hogsette's *Writing That Makes Sense,* and those who might feel offended at its flavor should consider what they've become used to. All our students deserve the opportunity to give a fair hearing to different perspectives and to wrestle with them as they form their own worldviews.