COMPOSING TO COMMUNICATE: A STUDENT'S GUIDE takes a conversational, "how to" approach to show you how writing connects to your academic and career goals. The textbook's jargon-free instruction provides you with accessible strategies that can be applied to all of your college writing tasks. The textbook focuses on teaching you how you can use writing and communicating to solve real problems and address issues that matter to you. It supports this theme by presenting student writing samples that demonstrate how writing for class can be more than just an academic exercise. Learning objectives open each chapter so you can focus on the most important points. The variety of writing projects, readings, and interviews with student writers aim to make your composition course more interesting than you may have imagined it could be. This edition has been updated to reflect guidelines from the 2016 MLA HANDBOOK, Eighth Edition.