构思新颖——将写作视为一个可以控制的过程，运用实例，展现文章构思、修改等具体环节

范文丰富——名家名篇与学生习作兼备，语言原汗原味，使学习者灵活掌握写作方法

读写结合——帮助学习者在提高阅读能力的同时，发现写作技巧的奥秘

实用性强——提供简历、求职信和研究论文等多种常用文体的写作方法，并介绍如何使用美国图书馆及网络资源

方便教学——课堂、课后练习形式多样，设计科学；配有多种网上辅助教学资源

John Langan has taught reading and writing at Atlantic Cape Com-munity College near Atlantic City, New Jersey, for over 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.