Pocket+Keys+for+Writers,+Second+Edition

//Pocket Keys for Writers, Second Edition// Ann Raimes

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Ann Raimes’s writing handbook, //Pocket Keys for Writers//, //Second Edition//, has been a required book in college composition courses across the country. As a pocket guide, it strives to convey the largest amount of remedial information in the most concise, easy-to-use ways possible; much of this is grounded in formalist pedagogy and theory. While there are obviously limitations to a pocket guide that may practically force the author to focus on formalist concerns (the necessary but intangible features of the process of writing pitted against the limitations of a 100-200 page handbook), the handbook should still leave room for some of the issues that are best addressed by using another pedagogical style. These issues, such as the multiple styles of writing and the issue of developing an individual voice, would obviously take much more room than would fit in a pocket, but the guide can certainly raise the ideas.

Ann Raimes divides her pocket guide up into nine different parts; each part tackles an aspect of writing with which students often struggle. Most of them center around formatting and grammatical issues as well as researching as a process, decidedly formalist topics by nature. She attempts to delve into the style world in Part Five, which she calls “The 5 C’s of Style”, and offers some good general ideas for inexperienced writers, but it would be very easy to take her suggestions as absolutes. In other words, students who take her pocket guide as the ‘be all, end all’ of writing will be inclined to follow such overgeneralizations as, “Never use ‘to be’ verbs in academic writing” and “Avoid slang and colloquial phrases at all costs”. Her tips are useful in moderation and will no doubt improve students’ writing, as long as the students have explicit understanding of the exceptions to these rules that can be beneficial in certain stylistic and rhetorical situations. As a pocket guide for high school upperclassmen to college freshmen, its benefit lies in its discussion of researching and documentation.

=Parts 1- 4: Writing Process, Researching, Plagiarism =

Raimes really shines in her discussion of researching and plagiarism and, to a lesser degree, her introduction of the writing process. She places the writing process itself in the first part and, although she states that the process is not linear, gives a very formulaic and decidedly linear numbered overview of the steps in the writing process. Nancy Sommers, author of "Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers", posits that the linear model is decidedly unhelpful and can even serve as an impediment to the creativity and mature thought processes that develop from a cyclical writing process, especially one that contains the idea of a revision period that last the entire writing process. Process pedagogists Donald Murray and Lad Tobin agree, stating that the writing process cannot be forced and the writer must develop naturally in order to gain the full range of the writing process. Raimes offers characteristics to a good thesis, which make it explicit that it should be an arguable opinion but also unfortunately limit it to the ‘one sentence’ idea. At the end of the first section she dips her toe in the water of digital media, offering points to consider when using visuals and asserting that the biggest consideration should be how to best make the desired point. As an outdated edition (with a copyright date of 2006), the guide is limited by the technology that was available and error-free at the time of publication.

After her discussion of the writing process as a whole, Raimes moves on to the researching aspect of it in “Part Two: Researching and Using Sources”. This section, as well as the following section on plagiarism and how to avoid it, are where Raimes asserts the importance of her guide as a worthwhile companion to writing education. Any mimetic scholar, with their emphasis on the researching process and their exalting of the connection between good writing and good thinking, would consider Raimes's meticulous discussion of researching a work of integrity in the field of writing pedagogy.

Among the other helpful aspects of this part, Raimes gives tips for keyword searching, which would be extremely invaluable to students who have trouble deciding where to start and how to narrow down their research. She includes a ten page list of scholarly books, websites, and databases for twenty-seven different disciplines ranging from biology to literature that gives students multiple starting points for their research. Her section on how to evaluate sources is also particularly useful for novice researchers as it mentions some trustworthy databases to use as well as how to thoroughly critique a website and find the necessary publication information on most websites. The only downfall in this section is Raimes’s discussion of taking good notes, which is entirely too brief for such an important aspect of researching; in order to have good, useful information from multiple sources, a writer must develop the skills necessary to take good, functional notes from each.

Potentially the most helpful and unique section of Raimes’s handbook, “Part Three: Steering Clear of Plagiarsm” outlines just what its name implies: the pitfalls and dangers of plagiarism, whether intentional or accidental. Raimes defines plagiarism to clarify any prior misgivings and outlines specifically when to cite, complete with examples of common incorrect citations and how to fix them. She discusses the difference between a summary and a paraphrase and when to use citation in language that is easy to understand and follow.

One of the most interesting parts of this section was the ESL focus, which brought up the difference between the Western values in terms of ownership and nonwestern ideas, which value more collaboration and understanding of classical texts without a necessary citation. This special consideration of the English as a Second Language population sets Raimes’s handbook ahead of other pocket manuals. Fan Shen, author of "The Classroom and the Wider Culture: Identity as a Key to Learning English Composition" states that "cultural background ...shapes...approaches to...writing in English" (459) and asserts that a writer must understand the values of a the Western culture to be a successful English writer; Raimes upholds this by making the instructors and students alike aware of possible discrepancies between cultures. She ends her section with a brief overview of which disciplines often use each citation style, a natural transition to her next section on documentation.

Raimes’s fourth section on documentation is set up extremely well – at the beginning of each citation style she has an “at a glance” section for ease of use. The format closely resembles that of the official citation guides, which provides continuity for students who struggle with understanding the intense jargon in the citation handbooks and seek remediation elsewhere. Raimes addresses the MLA, APA, Chicago, and CBE/CSE styles of citation, giving each a specific section but still following the same basic format for each. MLA, however, is allotted much more than any of the others; features special to MLA and omitted from the others are troubleshooting, screenshots of where to find website information, and how to handle missing information. It is possible that the majority of users of the handbook would focus on MLA and thus legitimize the larger devotion, but a note regarding where to find more information on the other styles would not be remiss. Raimes makes good use of the available technology in this section with the aforementioned website screenshot which can be found in the online problems troubleshooting section; Raimes’s inclusion of sections such as this serve to help the frustrated student who may otherwise give up in their search for the correct citation information and cite incorrectly.

=Part 5: Style =

As previously mentioned, Raimes’s fifth part, “The 5 C’s of Style” is arguably the worst part of her handbook. In it, she espouses such ‘advice’ as avoiding use of passive voice at all costs and avoiding clichés, slang, and colloquial language. While this may be relevant in some instances, rhetorical situations may arise where a well-placed “No way” or “Betcha” bring to the writing something that would be lost in a formal, stuffy piece of writing that avoids such speech. Raimes’s biggest issue in this particular section is that she is attempting to boil down an immensely complex issue like writing style, which has countless exceptions and additions to the ‘rules’, and fit it into a nice clean container like a pocket guide without acknowledging the intricacy of the concept itself. In terms of writing instruction, it would have been more beneficial if she had left it out of her guide completely, or at the very least devoted a passage to mentioning the minutiae.

Her formulaic approach to the writing process contradicts the ideas of expressivist theorists such as Peter Elbow, who hold voice to an extremely high degree, asserting that the voice present in students' writing is the crux of what individualizes their work. Elbow would rather see a student play with the voice of their paper and develop good ideas rather than focus on the formalist issues of grammar and punctuation. In his essay "A Method for Teaching Writing", Elbow asserts a third criteria for assessing writing (the first two being truthfulness and mechanical superiority) that focuses on the effect on the reader. Elbow says that this third criteria is what is naturally in daily life, by the academic and the farmer alike, so why not utilize it and strive for it in students' writing? Under this theory, Raimes's advice (avoiding certain phrases thought of as being 'too cliche') is completely null and void, since the cliche may indeed be integral in what effect the writing strives to accomplish. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">media type="youtube" key="LlL5W2qA0EA?rel=0" height="244" width="296" align="left"

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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In this video, Peter Elbow discusses the ne cessary separation of the physical process of writing (putting words on a page) and catching spelling and grammar mistakes. Ann Raimes seems to combine them into one fluid movement, thereby limiting students' ability to really think about their ideas and instead forces them to be preoccupied with formalist concerns.

= = = = = = =<span style="color: #404040; font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif;">Parts 6-8: Common Problems, Punctuation, ESL Writers =

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Raimes returns to her formalist ways in the sixth and seventh parts, focusing on the most common problems that arise in students’ sentences and then moving on to punctuation and mechanics. Most of the sixth section focuses on lists of different parts of speech, such as irregular verbs and pronouns, and when to be particularly diligent in watching for common mistakes. Students who use this as a guide would become confused and frustrated with the intense jargon that Raimes uses in the grammar section, which is most likely precisely what has them confused in the first place. When emphasizing the formalist approach, like Raimes does in this section, it would be beneficial to include grammar exercises for practice and as a form of self-check for understanding. Punctuation and mechanics, notes Raimes, is integral in our grasp of the meaning of long sentences and thus an important skill for any writer to master (176). For each mark of punctuation, she includes the purpose and a table that lists the rules of usage with explanations for the more confusing rules like apostrophes and possession or semicolon versus colon. Again, however, her writing is full of jargon that would be confusing to the writer unfamiliar with the writing discourse community and, thus, defeats the point of the handbook as a remediation tool. Indeed, one example is confusing even to upperclassmen English majors:



<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The last instructional part, “For Multilingual/ESL Writers” is a step in the right direction – addressing the ESL population that is expected to write and write well in a foreign language with little to no useful direction – but it fails to really provide helpful answers and explanations to confusing aspects. The main topics covered, articles, verb endings (including infinitives, -//ing// and –//ed//), and sentence structure, are discussed in ways that attempt to clarify inconsistencies in English but in reality end up being more confusing than anything. Raimes offers internal questions for ESL students to clarify article usage, and points out other languages that set up their verbs and sentence structures differently in hopes of making the ESL student aware of their preconceptions from first languages, which is beneficial. Patricia Bizzell, however, would posit that expectations for writing are culturally determined and it would be unfair to ask second language students to understand these expectations without explicit instruction on the second language's culture of writing.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Raimes uses proofreading marks to show these changes that may be confusing even to native English speakers but offers no explanations, another instance where she fails to provide adequate guidance for students. Instead of focusing on student error, Andrea Lunsford asserts that how errors are contemplated are more important than the actual errors in her essay "Mistakes are a Fact of Life". If the writing instruction is focused on error, errors certainly will be found, but if the instruction is focused on the development of writers at any stage, the strides made towards mature, stimulating writing will stand out.

=<span style="color: #404040; font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif;">Part 9: Glossaries, Conclusion =

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">//Pocket Keys for Writers// concludes with two glossaries, one of usage and one of grammar, and an index for all of the subjects addressed in the book. Even to the very end, she focuses on the formalist concerns and continues to create a handbook that is best used for as a reference for research strategies and citation assistance than writing instruction as a whole. Although useful as a supplementary researching and citation guide, eleventh and twelfth grade students would have to have explicit instruction on the stylistic and technical aspects of Raimes's advice for novice writers in order to benefit the most from using this as a writing resource.

=<span style="color: #404040; display: block; font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; text-align: center;">Resources on the Internet =

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">A simple Google search will take you to the publishing website for //Pocket Keys for Writers//, which has supplementary web-based material for the manual. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Textbook homepage
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Overall homepage for the second edition.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Internet Research Guide
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Tutorial providing instruction on how to effectively use the Internet to find scholarly research. Offers warnings for Internet aspects that can cause problems.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Links and Resources
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Links to the sources Raimes cites in guide. Includes small annotations to aid in research process.