We promise you . . . students have never SEEN writing like this before

D. J. Henry’s goal for Writing for Life: reach today’s students. Through the use of real-life situations Henry shows students how and why writing is an essential life skill and reaches them by answering the question so many students ask: “What’s the point?” Additionally, through a ground-breaking design developed in conjunction with Dorling Kindersley (DK), Henry makes writing, reading and thinking processes visible, reaching today’s visually oriented students by showing the processes rather than just telling students about them. Unique visual representations of the writing process and highly graphic layouts make the instruction accessible to developing writers, empowering them to transfer the learning strategies they already use in interpreting the visual world to the task of writing.

The book’s contents, features, and instructional methodology reflect author D. J. Henry’s 25 years of classroom experience and her studies into learning theory research–a reflection of today’s developmental classroom and today’s developing writers. We promise you . . . this revolutionary text will transform your developmental classroom — and transform your students’ writing and lives.

Reviewer quotes for Writing for Life

I expect that students would respond well [to Writing for Life], given its activities and assignments, which reflect their lives, current events, and high-interest and relevant topics; its mature tone; its visual reinforcement; and its easy-to-navigate format.

—Kathleen Beauchene, Community College of Rhode Island

Writing for Life is uniquely suited to today’s students, who have a full range of grammatical and stylistic options in their spoken language, but are unaccustomed to using them in print.

—Nanette Tamer, Villa Julie College

Developmental Writing Textbooks Usability Study Results

Because developmental writing students don’t merely “read” textbooks but actually use them, Longman commissioned a scientific usability study to ensure that the content, delivery, and design of D. J. Henry’s Writing for Life were more useful than the traditional best-seller.

The tests were conducted one-on-one with eleven developmental writing students from a two-year college. In the test, the students were asked to rate each textbook chapter on four main criteria. The result summaries are below:

1. Students prefer Writing for Life’s overall usefulness. On a 4-point scale where 4=Very Useful and 1=Not Useful, students gave Writing for Life an average score of 3.55, while the other text received just a 2.82.

2. Students believe Writing for Life prepares them better for writing. On a 4-point scale where 4= “I know exactly what I am going to write” and 1=”I don’t feel like I’m ready to write at all,” Writing for Life scored a full point higher than the other text (3.36 vs. 2.36).

3. Students felt Writing for Life offers better treatment of specific content areas. • Better explanation of what a narrative paragraph is: 9 preferred Writing for Life.
• Better treatment of topic sentences: 8 preferred Writing for Life.
• Better understanding of how to create an organizational structure for narrative paragraphs: 8 preferred Writing for Life.
• Better assistance creating their own paragraphs: 8 preferred Writing for Life (1 had no preference).
• Better preparation for writing their own paragraphs: 8 chose Writing for Life.
• 4. Bottom line: Over two-thirds of the students tested would recommend Writing for Life over Evergreen to their instructors.

View a Sample Chapter PDF:

Pearson Higher Education offers special pricing when you choose to package your text with other student resources. If you're interested in creating a cost-saving package for your students, contact your Pearson Higher Education representative for pricing and ordering information.

Pearson Higher Education offers special pricing when you choose to package your text with other student resources. If you're interested in creating a cost-saving package for your students contact your Pearson Higher Education representative.