A conversation metaphor that makes sense to students. By framing writing as a conversation, Joining the Conversation helps students connect their real-world writing across media to the academic writing they do in class. The book’s focus on the rhetorical situation shows students that the questions they face when they write online are the same questions they encounter in academic writing: Who is my audience? What am I trying to say, and why?

Engaging readings that mix public and academic audiences, traditional and multimodal styles. Current readings offer models in a variety of genres, from magazine profiles and advertisements to open letters and scholarly journal articles, and address timely topics, such as race in America and the natural disasters fueled by climate change.

Featured Student Writers in each assignment chapter put a face on academic writing. In Process boxes in Part 2 follow the work of six real college students across a variety of purposes and topics, culminating in their final essays.

Achieve with Joining the Conversation offers a dedicated composition space for writing instructors and students of all comfort levels with course technology. It provides trusted content with a robust e-book, diagnostics with personalized study plans, and writing tools that break down the writing process for students, make revision choices more visible to instructors, and guide students through drafting, peer review, plagiarism checks, reflection, and revision. For corequisite composition courses, Achieve lets students sign in to their composition and corequisite sections with one easy process–and no additional fees.