Thresholds: Literature-Based Composition

THRESHOLDS, a combination rhetoric, reader, and research guide, ideally suits the needs of today's composition student. Featuring a wide selection of authors from many cultural viewpoints, THRESHOLDS targets many pressing issues: writing skills (reader-response), critical thinking skills, the research process, and cultural literacy. Topics and issues relevant to our lives and the world in which we live appear in various literary genres in THRESHOLDS and serve as stimulus for rhetorical discussions, formal and informal evaluation, analysis, and argumentation. The diverse genres of literature in THRESHOLDS also function as a forum for word study. Some of thematic readings fit in more than one chapter and induce student response. Overall, the goal of THRESHOLDS has been to couple innovative with traditional methods of writing intstruction to provide flexibility for different approaches to learning and teaching.