Hello, Writer: An Academic Writing Guide, developed for the first-year  composition course with corequisite support, combines familiar academic writing and reading topics with a fresh and flexible approach that works in multiple teaching and learning contexts and with a range of college writers. Support for common first-year writing assignments—such as analyzing a text, arguing a position, and presenting research—sits side by side with support for first-year writers. Drawing heavily on principles of learning science and psychology and facilitating engagement through practice and reflection, this purposes-driven rhetoric offers a foundation for today’s high-challenge, high-support corequisite learning models. Reading strategies, noncognitive learning, and plenty of scaffolding pair easily with David Starkey’s easy-going conversational style. It’s an upbeat composition text that takes college success very seriously. Hello, Writer looks squarely at first-year students and says: You can do it. You belong here. You are a writer.

What’s more, Achieve with Hello, Writer offers guided practice and facilitates writing, revision, reflection, and peer review—all in a powerful online platform designed to build skills, spark engagement, and boost confidence.

PART 1 · Becoming a College Reader and Writer
Chapter 1 · Knowing Yourself and Your Community
Chapter 2 · Becoming a College Reader
Chapter 3 · Investigating a Topic: Growth Mindset, Grit, and College Success
Chapter 4 · Prewriting
Chapter 5 · Generating a Thesis and Organizing Your Essay
Chapter 6 · Composing Paragraphs
Chapter 7 · Composing Introductions, Conclusions, and Titles
Chapter 8 · Reviewing and Revising
Chapter 9 · Editing and Proofreading
 
PART 2 · Strategies for Academic Writing
Chapter 10 · Making an Evaluation
Chapter 11 · Arguing a Position
Chapter 12 · Proposing a Solution 
Chapter 13 · Analyzing a Text
Chapter 14 · Reading and Writing Multimodal Texts
 
PART 3 · Writing with Research
Chapter 15 · Establishing Your Research and Writing Goals
Chapter 16 · Locating and Evaluating Sources
Chapter 17 · Drafting and Revising Your Research Essay
Chapter 18 · MLA Style
Chapter 19 · APA Style
 
Appendix: Keeping a Portfolio
Appendix: Writing Timed/In-class Essays