This is the second edition of the text that explores the reading/writing connection as a tool for teaching writing. The book, which follows the writing process, aims to guide students in reading, exploring their personal reponse to their reading and developing that response in writing. It offers 82 multi-genre selections (essays, fiction, poetry) arranged around the writing process and rhetorical strategies, and 33 of these selections are new to the second edition. The reader integrates an interconnected system which includes biographies of the writer, preview materials, vocabulary lists, end-of-reading questions for discussion and suggestions for journal writing. Writing assignments are also included at the end of each chapter. Students should be able to master narration and description, the classic forms of personal writing, before moving on to more challenging modes of discourse. In this second edition there is a new chapter on persuasion and more writing assignments are included, some relating back to journal writing assignments and some suggesting independent writing assignments. A new edition to the Getting Started section of the text, dealing with the making of a student essay, illustrates the process involved when writing an essay from start to finish.