Help your students get the most out of their textbook with LaunchPad for The St. Martin’s Guide to Writing
What resources are available for my students?
LaunchPad contains resources for you and your students. In this tutorial, we’ll take a detailed look at both types.
Diagnostics
Four diagnostics are available to help students and instructors identify areas of strength and areas for improvement on sub-topics related to grammar and reading.
Two comprehensive tests for grammar as well as reading allow instructors to assign diagnostics in a pre/post format.
Instructors have access to a reports screen that allows them to preview questions and view results by skill, roster, or individual student.
e-Book
In the e-book you’ll find all the great content and activities from the printed book, including
Acclaimed Guides to Writing, emphasizing the basic features of the genre to help students internalize a systematic yet flexible approach to the composing process that can be transferred to any writing situation.
Sustained Attention to Critical Reading, with guides that help students hone their ability to read like a writer.
A new Chapter 1, “Composing Literacy,” with exciting brief literacy narratives like the hilarious “Me Talk Pretty One Day” by David Sedaris about the challenges of learning a foreign language and a graphic memoir by cartoonist Lynda Barry, looking back on her inventive interpretations of the classifieds.
1 chapter (chapter 2) on writing a memoir, which walks students through the process of telling a story with pizzazz.
1 chapter (chapter 3) on writing a profile, a mini-documentary that takes readers behind the scenes through slice-of-life portraits.
1 chapter (chapter 4) on explaining a concept, a crucial skill in college writing and beyond.
A new Chapter 5, “Analyzing and Synthesizing Opposing Arguments,” which shows students how to review an array of positions, synthesize ideas across selections, and analyze alternative viewpoints carefully before adopting positions of their own.
Thorough coverage of argumentation, with 5 assignment chapters (chapters 6-10) asking students to argue for a position, a solution, an evaluation, a cause, and an interpretation.
A brief handbook providing students with a reliable resource they can use when they need it for help with issues from avoiding comma splices to subject-verb agreement.
What additional resources are available for students?
Additional student essays from Sticks and Stones and Other Essays, a collection of student essays written in response to the assignments in Part 1 of The Guide.
Tutorials that help students learn crucial skills from reading critically and citing sources in MLA and APA style to digital composing skills and building your professional brand.
LearningCurve for a unique learning path for each student. Developed in light of the latest advances in learning research, LearningCurve offers game-like adaptive quizzing covering topics from grammar and usage to reading critically and argument. The less a student knows about a topic, the more LearningCurve focuses on it, and the better a student does, the more difficult the questions become. Feedback for each question includes links to relevant instructional content, guiding students to the information they need to master.
What additional resources are available for instructors? From your LaunchPad home page, click on a chapter to find
Grammar and reading diagnostic quizzes, which can be assigned to gauge student preparedness.
Instructor’s notes, highlighting key resources for each chapter; the instructor’s notes are visible only to instructors and can be rolled up by clicking on the “hide instructor’s notes” button.
Auto-graded, 5-question multiple-choice quizzes for every professional reading selection in the e-book, available in the resources for each chapter; click on the “Browse Resources for this Unit” button or navigate to the “Resources” panel to find these quizzes.
Assignable reading activities: Instructors can assign the activities following each professional reading selection to individual students or groups of students by clicking on the “Browse Resources for this Unit” button or navigating to the “Resources” panel to find those and other resources for this chapter. The activities can be tailored to the instructor’s own students or assigned as is.
A summary practice quiz (with a model summary as feedback) for every professional reading selection in the e-book, available in the resources for each chapter; click on the “Browse Resources for this Unit” button or navigate to the “Resources” panel to find these quizzes.
The Instructor’s Resource Manual, including detailed support for teaching each chapter in The Guide (in-class activities, learning objectives, special challenges, suggestions for teaching, and more), plus coverage of teaching and evaluation practices, tips for integrating technology into your teaching, suggested course plans, and a bibliography in composition studies.
PowerPoint presentation slides for all the assignment chapters plus the chapters on invention and reading strategies.