Common Places represents a cohesive instructional framework to accelerate college readiness. Teaching reading and writing together requires more than just combining separate reading and writing pedagogies. This textbook helps students read from a writer's point of view and write with an imagined reader ever present. It introduces the importance of emotional intelligence, problem solving, metacognition, and self-advocacy. The students integrate skills and are challenged to develop literacy skills by engaging in real-world projects. By developing their skills in this context, students acquire the literacy skills they need to pass challenging college-level courses.
In addition to integrating and accelerating instruction, the pedagogy embeds content designed to foster the emotional intelligence development, metacognition, and problem-solving skills students often lack, yet which are correlated with higher grade point averages and a greater capacity to learn.
Upper-level projects feature four readings on specific topics and require students to read and analyze the selections and then integrate them effectively in their own source-based, documented essay. Purpose-oriented projects keep students interested and motivated. The handbook puts a strong emphasis on sentence combining and grammar in context. 
The logical and clear framework presented in Common Places provides an abundance of models that help build students' confidence in their ability to master specific skills as they work through the chapters and the projects. Students are able to model behavior based on the features included in the chapters. The text employs several strategies to help students master the skills of reading and writing in an integrated fashion:•Scaffolded instruction presents reading and writing processes from the ground up.•Students are prompted to think their way through the steps the text provides, not just follow them.•Students are guided to select and combine patterns of development that fit writing purposes-informing, analyzing, evaluating, and persuading.•Sentence combining helps students develop true grammatical competency. •High-interest readings of various lengths from a variety of sources are analyzed for Lexile level.•Graphics replace dense sections of text and gradually transition to text.•Chapters include a variety of methods to inform, engage, and increase skills, such as a fictional student and a new theme on fast food.•LearnSmart Achieve offers an adaptive, individualized learning experience to teach reading and writing skills in tandem, targeting students' particular strengths and weaknesses.•Instructors may add the Grammar and Mechanics Handbook from Common Ground, the lower-level text in this program.•Common Places and Connect Integrated Reading and Writing (a state-of-the-art learning technology product) provide a cohesive instructional framework to accelerate college readiness. 
New to This Edition•A new introduction to the projects section provides the step-by-step process a hypothetical student uses to complete a project, giving students a specific example of how to complete a project from start to finish with easy-to-follow steps. •Emotional intelligence is given an in-depth focus throughout the second edition, helping students relate elements of their development to their personal growth outside the classroom.•Features like Thinking from an Instructor's Point of View exercises enable students to develop multiple points of view.