本书是一部全面、系统、实用的英语写作教材，适合大学英语专业学生、非英语专业高年级学生以及其他希望提高英语写作水平的学习者使用。

本书第一部分介绍作文的写作过程；第二部分列举了作文的九种写作方法，即描写、叙事、举例、过程、因果、对比、定义、分类和论述；第三部分的目的是：以前两部分为基础，提高大学生的写作能力，涉及大学阶段专门题材的写作；第四部分介绍遣词造句的技巧；最后一部分是用于写作练习的预读材料。

和前几版相比，该版进行了一些改进。首先，随着因特网的普及，在资料的检索方面更加快捷和广泛，这一版加强了这方面的指导，并配备了一些网上学习材料。其次，本版增加了避免抄袭行为的内容，是学生能够更规范地表达自己的思想。第三，在第三章加强了对“论题”的指导。第四，全书共增加了五篇新的阅读材料。

John Langan has taught reading and writing at Atlantic Cape Com-munity College near Atlantic City, New Jersey, for more than twenty-five years. The author of a popular series of college textbooks on both writing and reading, John enjoys the challenge of developing materials that teach skills in an especially clear and lively way. Before teaching, he earned advanced degrees in writing at Rutgers University and in reading at Rowan University. He also spent a year writing fiction that,he says, "is now at the back of a drawer waiting to be discovered and acclaimed posthumously." While in school, he supported himself by working as a truck driver, a machinist, a battery assembler, a hospital attendant, and an apple packer. John now lives with his wife, Judith Nadell, near Philadelphia. In addition to his wife and Philly sports teams, his passions include reading and turning on nonreaders to the pleasure and power of books. Through Townsend Press, his educational publishing company, he has developed the nonprofit "Townsend Library"--a collection of more than thirty new and classic stories that appeal to readers of any age.