Journey of Discovery: Research Writing in College

The JOURNEY OF DISCOVERY is a cross between a standard English Composition textbook and notes from an English Composition college course. This ClassBook (CLASS notes + textBOOK) presents the college research writing process in ten steps—Plan, Explore, Find, Read, Draft, Revise, Edit, Proof, Format, and Publish. It also introduces students to the two primary types of research writing expected at a Christian college—the biblical and the argumentative research papers. Why a ClassBook? As a college professor, I would require my students to purchase extensive and expensive English textbooks, yet I often would use only a fraction of the material. This ClassBook condenses and summarizes the key major concepts from a textbook into a short and readable workbook format. This way students will not need to weed through an expensive 500-page textbook. In addition, I would provide class notes to my students, yet these notes would be mostly general summaries of key concepts without extensive descriptions. This ClassBook provides a much-expanded narrative of the class notes in a more unified format, so students will not need to take up valuable class time taking notes. The concept is simple—students read the ClassBook at home BEFORE class instead of consuming valuable class time with note taking. Thus students can spend more time practicing and applying the concepts of research writing during the class period.