What Is Good Writing? - Hardcover

Huck, Geoffrey

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0190212950 ISBN 13: 9780190212957

Publisher: OUP USA, 2015

Synopsis

There was a time when good writing would be defined simply by adverting to a few literary classics. That kind of strategy is less helpful these days, when so many different styles and voices clamor for attention. What Is Good Writing? sets the terms for a contemporary debate on writing achievement by drawing on empirical research in linguistics and the other cognitive sciences that shed light on the development of fluency in language generally. The utility of defining good writing as fluent writing in this sense -- on a par with the typical fluency in speech attained by normal adults - is demonstrated by the progress it permits in evaluating the success of current writing programs in school and university, which for the most part have proved unable to deliver writing assessments that are both valid and reliable. What Is Good Writing? indicates an alternative approach that rests on a more scientific footing and shows why reading is key and why standard composition programs are so often seen to fail.

About this title

About the Author

Geoffrey J. Huck teaches in the Writing Department at York University in Toronto. He is coauthor of Ideology and Linguistic Theory: Noam Chomsky and the Deep Structure Debates and coeditor of Syntax and Semantics 20: Discontinuous Constituency. He also writes mystery novels under the pen name Morty Guggenmoose.

Edition details

• Publisher: OUP USA
• Publication date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0190212950
• ISBN 13: 9780190212957
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 232