About the Book

The first year of university experience needs to provide new stimulation for intellectual growth and a firm grounding in inquiry-based learning.

Boyer Commission Report

The Curious Writer is a new textbook by the author of the innovative and popular book, The Curious Researcher, as well as The Curious Reader—textbooks which all put the “spirit of inquiry” at the center. While students will learn the features of different genres of writing—like the profile, the review, the critical essay, the research essay—they will, more importantly, learn methods of inquiry that are multi-disciplinary and inform any kind of writing they will do. Ballenger has developed a model of inquiry that is unique in the field, a model that maintains the complexity of dialectical thinking while offering concrete strategies that students find accessible and useful.

What is the spirit of inquiry? It begins with the premise that students and teachers are collaborators in learning, creating knowledge together through the questions they ask and the methods that best help them answer them. Inquiry-based learning does not assume students are passive recipients of knowledge, but rather active makers of knowledge within communities of learners. In The Curious Writer Ballenger defines five key features of academic inquiry that permeate every chapter and assignment in the book:

• Begin with questions, not answers
• Suspend judgment
• Tolerate ambiguity
• Assume contrary roles of believer and doubter, generator and judge (dialectical thinking)
• Take responsibility for one’s ideas

Part One: The Spirit of Inquiry
Part One immerses students in inquiry-based learning and lays groundwork for every other chapter in the book. It’s best if students read these three chapters before they begin work with the writing projects in Part Two. In Chapter 1, Writing as Inquiry, students are asked to reflect on their beliefs about and experiences with writing, their writing process, and the idea that we may need to unlearn beliefs and strategies that are unhelpful in order to become more effective writers. In addition, students are introduced to some of the features of inquiry: beginning with questions, not answers; suspending judgment; and dialectical thinking. Every writing activity in this chapter invites students to experience the ideas being explained, engaging them in active learning. In Chapter 2, Reading as Inquiry, students begin by reflecting on their beliefs about reading, echoing Chapter 1, and then the activities focus on inquiry-based reading strategies that emphasize dialectical thinking and rhetorical context. Finally, Chapter 3, Ways of Inquiring, introduces four kinds of inquiry-based questions that students will use in every other chapter in the book and can apply in other contexts: questions that explore, explain, evaluate, and prompt reflection.

Part Two: Inquiry Projects
Part Two contains seven different assignment chapters whose chapter titles all begin with “Writing a ______.” They include, Writing a Personal Essay, a Profile, a Review, a Proposal, an Argument, a Critical Essay, and an Ethnography Essay. These titles emphasize that, while students will be introduced to seven different genres of nonfiction writing, the focus of each chapter is on the process of inquiry at the heart of every piece of writing. Here students will learn the features of each form, its connections to academic writing, and strategies for generating ideas, drafting, revising, workshopping, and revising again. Each chapter provides examples of the form by published and student writers, and engages students in the four kinds of inquiry questions introduced in Part One. In fact, everything students learn in Part One is integrated into every chapter in Part Two.

Part Three: Inquiring Deeper
Part Three focuses exclusively on researching: the research essay, research strategies, and citation methods. Research is a part of every assignment in Part Two, but Part Three offers specific techniques for using research to “inquire deeper” into the writer’s subject. And the research essay assignment builds on all the methods of inquiry students learn in Parts One and Two, which means students will experience research as an inquiry strategy, rather than a genre peculiar to college courses and isolated from the rest of their writing assignments.

Part Four: Reinquring
The chapters in this section reinforce the recursive nature of inquiry and writing. Chapter 14 offers substantive and specific revision strategies that writers can use at any point in their writing process and that instructors can assign at any point. Chapter 15 offers workshop strategies for students that are adaptable to specific assignments as well as applicable to any kind of writing. Chapter 15 also helps instructors teach students how to workshop effectively.

Handbook
In the casebound edition, an extensive handbook is included.

Appendices
Because many writing courses now use a portfolio method of evaluation, Appendix A presents not only the purposes for using portfolios, but also the many kinds that are often assigned. It provides students with writing prompts to help them assemble a portfolio no matter what the class and to help them compose a reflective introduction. Appendix B offers tips on writing a literature review; Appendix C on compiling an annotated bibliography; and Appendix D on writing an essay exam. Each appendix builds on the inquiry-based strategies presented in the book.

Features

• In his signature style, Ballenger’s prose is engaging and accessible. Readers encounter a person on the page who invites them to learn more about writing and inquiry in ways they wouldn’t expect.
• Inquiry-based learning—the spirit of inquiry—is at the heart of the book and woven throughout all the chapters. Students learn the five habits of mind at the core of inquiry. They also learn four types of inquiry-based questions that they can ask as they read and as they compose to help them generate ideas and engage in dialectical thinking.
• An extensive section on revision strategies, one of the most substantive treatments of revision of any textbook is included. Students are offered a myriad of revision activities appropriate to a particular problem in a draft, to the genre and rhetorical situation, and to the writer’s purpose. These revision strategies can be used at any point in the course.
• A chapter on The Writing Workshop that teaches students how to respond to peers’ drafts, offers several models for workshopping, and discusses the kinds of problems students might confront while learning how to be sensitive and helpful readers of other people’s writing.
• An approach to teaching research as a method of inquiry, not a separate activity or writing assignment in a course. While Part Three focuses exclusively on research writing, strategies, and conventions, research is integrated into every assignment chapter as a way of “inquiring deeper” into a subject, teaching students that research is not simply the name of an assignment they may have in a course, but a way of answering the questions which prompt us to explore and discover through writing.
• The text includes a chapter on writing an ethnography—unique to this textbook and popular in many writing courses.
• You will find a collection of published essays, as well as student essays that serve as examples of the genre in each chapter, models for students to consider as they write their own, and texts for students to respond to as both writers and readers. These essays range from the personal to the academic and help students see the connections among each genre. The questions at the end of each reading draw on the four categories of inquiry-based questions discussed in Chapter 3.
• The use of visual rhetoric to teach specific concepts is in every chapter.
• Instruction will be enhanced with assignment chapters that can be organized in any sequence and adapted to the needs of very different courses and programmatic goals.
• Numerous writing activities in every chapter prompt students to enact the very concepts about writing, reading, and inquiry they are reading about in the book. The activities in the assignment chapters move from idea generating to drafting, keeping procrastination at bay and ensuring students will have mounds of material for every essay they write. These exercises are flexible and adaptable, to be used in class or assigned out of class, and do not depend on any particular sequence.
• Permeating every chapter in the book, is a unique focus on reading as inquiry. Students learn to adapt their reading strategies to the rhetorical context and to use the same inquiry-based questions they draw on while writing. In this way, writing and reading are inseparable processes.
• The appendices offer substantial advice for putting together a portfolio, writing an essay exam, compiling an annotated bibliography, and drafting a literature review, all of which reflect the inquiry-based approach in the rest of the book.