Fundamentals of College Composition (FCC) is a compact, college level writing text that presents the underlying grammatical structures of Standard American English in a format that is understandable without prior formal grammar training.
The book's purpose is to improve the clarity and precision of undergraduate writing.
College instructors know that far too many undergraduates write poorly.
University English departments teach literature, not fundamental writing; university writing departments teach higher level creative-commercial writing, not fundamental writing.
Other disciplines must focus on teaching course content, and have precious little time to devote to improving their undergraduate's composition skills.
A popular reaction to the undergraduate writing dilemma has been to institute discipline-specific writing classes.
These classes tailor writing assignments to their particular disciplines, and a wide array of specialized writing texts are being published to meet the needs of these specialty writing courses.
Often, Strunk and White's Elements of Style (ES) is used as a companion to these texts.
ES is an excellent volume, but it was written in 1908 for a classification of students who possessed solid foundations in formal grammar studies.
Twenty first century undergraduates no longer possess those foundations and a text that presumes they do fails despite its distinguished and noble history.
FCC is designed to address this ``grammatical gap.
`` It provides a sub-structure of grammar study sufficient to bring a modern student to a basic understanding of the foundations of compositional language arts.
It confronts struggling writers with their compositional shortcomings, presents them with a kit of fundamental grammatical tools, explains the tools' purposes and functions, and invites students to write, revise, and re-write in short bursts of directed prose.
It avoids every intricacy of grammatical science that does not apply directly and practically to the pro.
Brown Walker Press (fl) Fundamental college composition, paperback/william p. defeo
