Navigating America

Navigating Americawas created to serve a research class�s needs in one textbook. Its unifying focus on information competency will help students make intelligent decisions not only about what to quote, paraphrase, or summarize in a research paper, but how to avoid plagiarism and about what ideas and evidence to trust in the world at large. Navigating America engages students. Every chapter and reading will get them closer to one overall objective: the ability to distinguish the different levels of reliability and relevance of the competing sources of information they consume. ..From the Preface .Having taught composition and research writing for over twenty years, we both noticed two major drawbacks when choosing textbooks to use for a course teaching freshmen how to write research papers: inadequate coverage of the skills needed for research in the world today (with its unprecedented proliferation of information), and the high cost to students of having to buy multiple texts for the class. . The Proliferation of Information .The first issue we wanted to address is the proliferation of information. Most texts focus on the skills needed to find academic information. There is so much more to modern day research, however, that we were always left wanting when reading most textbooks. We wanted a text that would address how to cope with the vast amounts of information�both academic and mundane�from diverse media faced by our students, as well as the skills to uncover pertinent materials in their own research and, perhaps more importantly, to evaluate and qualify the sources they find. . AnAll-in-OneApproach to the Research Paper . The other issue we wanted to address was the cost to students of having to buy a number of textbooks to cover MLA/APA format, research tips, punctuation and grammar rules, and an anthology of readings. Aside from the cost of buying multiple texts, these books were also invariably guided by differing pedagogies and voices, and it was frustrating and time-consuming trying to blend these divergent books into a cohesive whole in our classes. . We wroteNavigating America: Information Competency and Research for the 21st Centuryto overcome these drawbacks and to give a focused and guided approach to the different types of materials found in the study of popular culture�and to do this in a voice that students will find friendly and accessible. -David Moton.