Upon successful completion of this assignment, students will
- evaluate a given text against a predetermined rating system (unsatisfactory, needs improvement, meets expectations, exceeds expectations, and outstanding).
- compose an evaluation paper that integrates textual evidence, quotes, and paraphrases from the essay to support their ratings and overall assessment.

Author: Christopher Manes
Editor: Mary Landry, C. Anneke Snyder
Supervisor: Terri Pantuso

This unit is designed to support instructors as they guide students through the complex analytical, rhetorical, and research skills required to write advanced argumentative essays in a class setting similar to English 1302. Students will need these skills to succeed in most college courses, no matter what their major field of study may be. Content-wise, this unit first focuses on foundational research skills. Students will develop an open-ended, researchable question that guides them through a research proposal and an annotated bibliography, all while attending to source credibility. Building on this research, the unit then moves through the three core forms of argument: the Classical Argument, the Toulmin Argument, and the Rogerian Argument. Lesson presentations, assignments, and other instructional resources are included for each argument type.

Author: Kimberly Stelly
Editor: Mary Landry, C. Anneke Snyder
Supervisor: Terri Pantuso

This resource features two lesson plans: "Reading Critically for Bias and Tone" and "Reading Critically for Propaganda Techniques." Both of these lessons are designed to help students analyze authors' viewpoints and biases, as well as the general use of persuasive tactics in texts. Through group work, activities, and individual essays, students learn to identify and analyze elements such as word choice, tone, omissions, and propaganda techniques (i.e. straw man arguments, bandwagon appeals, etc.). The resource includes detailed assignment expectations, learning objectives, lesson preparation guidelines, and downloadable worksheets to support classroom implementation.

Author: Sharon Haigler
Editor: Mary Landry, C. Anneke Snyder
Supervisor: Terri Pantuso

This resource explains the writing process steps and many prewriting strategies to help students come up with ideas for their college writing assignments. The resource was remixed from several other creative commons resources. It can be used as a textbook chapter for students to read and view the videos or as a prewriting assignment. It can also serve as an instructor resource to provide lecture notes and videos or in-class prewriting exercises.This resource was created to align to the English 1301 Student Learning Objective (SLO) "Develop ideas with appropriate support and attribution" as the initial idea-generation step of that process, and it also aligns to the English 1301 SLO "Demonstrate knowledge of individual writing processes," as it begins with explaining the writing process steps.  

By utilizing this handout, instructors can guide students in mastering the art of writing compelling thesis statements and recognizing their essential components

Author: Brandi Morley, Claire Carly-Miles
Editor: Mary Landry, C. Anneke Snyder
Supervisor: Terri Pantuso

This graphic organizer serves as a resource instructors can customize to guide students through specific annotations, such as analyzing the rhetorical situation or analyzing the author’s intention with specific word choices.

Author: Frances Santos
Editor: Mary Landry, C. Anneke Snyder
Supervisor: Terri Pantuso

The following resource provides a blank worksheet instructors can customize to guide students through specific annotations, such as analyzing the rhetorical situation or analyzing the author’s intention with specific word choices. This resource illustrates how the worksheet might be used with two suggested readings. The first example features a nonfiction essay discussing the complex opinions around choosing disability through preimplantation genetic diagnosis. With this text, students will encounter questions about vocabulary, tone, argumentative reasoning, types of evidence, and more. The second example features an excerpt from the book The Devil’s Highway by Luis Alberto Urrea, which vividly recounts a desolate desert. In this example, students will analyze the purpose of devices such as allusions, diction, and imagery. An instructor has the option of using either example or customizing the blank worksheet to their own purposes.

Author: Frances Santos
Editor: Mary Landry, C. Anneke Snyder
Supervisor: Terri Pantuso

Through this worksheet, students learn how to engage in close reading while evaluating the writer’s rhetorical choices regarding allusions, diction, and imagery.

Author: Frances Santos
Editor: Mary Landry, C. Anneke Snyder
Supervisor: Terri Pantuso

Through this worksheet, students learn how to engage in close reading while analyzing the writer’s vocabulary, tone, and reasoning.

Author: Frances Santos
Editor: Mary Landry, C. Anneke Snyder
Supervisor: Terri Pantuso

By posing provocative inquiries about local and state government, this worksheet is intended to ready students for abstract learning while guarding against conformity and encouraging critical thought. Specifically, students will be able to express their opinions on key concepts related to representative democracy, including elected officials, term limits, and the interconnectedness of state and federal politics

Author: Sharon Haigler
Editor: Mary Landry, C. Anneke Snyder
Supervisor: Terri Pantuso

This is the 1-credit coreq designed to accompany ENGL 1301. The course has four components: grammar, reading questions, writing style assignments, and reflections. There is a module for each of the components, with templates, videos, and resources. There is also an instructional resources module. 

Propaganda is used in several ways as a persuasive technique. Designers and authors desire to sway the reader’s thinking in specific ways to perhaps make certain purchases, as is the case in retail advertising. Other authors would like to communicate certain ideas and persuade the readers to adopt their beliefs. Naïve or unaware readers may find themselves subject to being pressured into challenging their own deeply held beliefs by experts or authorities or by something heard on the news or read in a book.

The purpose of this worksheet is to sensitize readers to the various propaganda techniques used in media of various forms and to challenge the readers to screen incoming information through their belief systems. Specifically, students will practice matching various statements to propaganda techniques like straw man arguments, bandwagon appeals, half-truths, loaded words, and obfuscation.

Author: Sharon Haigler
Editor: Mary Landry, C. Anneke Snyder
Supervisor: Terri Pantuso

This document explains what to do after an exam is completed in order to make changes prior to the next test cycle.

What intervention strategies can you align to this lesson?
Active Study Techniques
Levels of Learning (Bloom’s Taxonomy)
6 Strategies for Effective Learning
Exam Preparation

Author: Morgan Jones, PhD

The Academic Success Center at Texas A&M University operates with a mission to provide comprehensive resources that help all Aggies achieve their academic goals and realize their academic potential. This award-winning organization specializes in intervention strategies geared specifically toward academic success for all learners. Their knowledge base derives from attending nationally and regionally recognized conferences, serving on university-level committees, and conducting ongoing professional development, all in the area of diversity and inclusion. Their vision is to be a state and national model of excellence known for inspiring academic success through innovative collaboration, cutting edge research, and efficient and inclusive student-centered programming.

This component is about talking with professors, instructors, and teachers at a professional level of communication. The importance of effective communication with educators is discussed along with examples, case studies, and actionable items for students.

What intervention strategies can you align to this lesson?
Time Management

Author: Tyler Laughlin

The Academic Success Center at Texas A&M University operates with a mission to provide comprehensive resources that help all Aggies achieve their academic goals and realize their academic potential. This award-winning organization specializes in intervention strategies geared specifically toward academic success for all learners. Their knowledge base derives from attending nationally and regionally recognized conferences, serving on university-level committees, and conducting ongoing professional development, all in the area of diversity and inclusion. Their vision is to be a state and national model of excellence known for inspiring academic success through innovative collaboration, cutting edge research, and efficient and inclusive student-centered programming.

This resource is a template for redesigning a course to include OER. This template was designed for the OER Advanced Skills series in June 2023."Life is Sharing" image published on Wikimedia Commons by Alan Levine (CC BY-SA)

The layout of our book implies there is a beginning, middle, and end to a writing course, but because writing is both an art and a skill, people will find their own processes for learning, improving, and using these skills. Writing processes differ because we are each looking for a workable schemata that fits our way of thinking. Try out a variety of writing processes and strategies, and find what works for you. If you are not uncomfortable on this journey, you simply are not stretching yet.

A quick glance through the book will show you that it deftly covers the basics, which are always important to review as you get ready to build onto your scaffolding. Reminders of terminology that form the foundation of a discipline—as well as explanations, descriptions, and examples of their use in a basic education—are in chapters such as “Critical Reading,” “Writing Basics: What Makes a Good Sentence,” “The Writing Process,” “Punctuation,” and “Working with Words.” These are, of course, fundamentals that you have worked with throughout your education, learning in each course skills and habits that elevate your reading, writing, and thinking abilities. This college writing course will ensure that you take another step up to college and professional writing.

This text is different in its emphasis on research skills and research writing. The form you will learn, the building blocks of that form, the formality, and the sacrosanct crediting of sources is explained here from English professors and our instructional librarian at the college. Leaning on questions that lead to searches for answers that lead to arguments that present your understanding, the chapters “Critical Reading,” “Rhetorical Modes,” and “Argument” will fill out your growing appreciation of and comfort with the research form in everyday life. From the discussion of source types to guidance through the research process to the models of essay deconstruction, you will find that the expectations and language of this text begin with the college-level student in mind.

Working through this text will elevate you into the next stage of writing for a 21st century student and professional.

Some words may not cause a particular emotional reaction whereas other words with similar meanings may fire up anger, joy, fear, or other emotions. Authors may choose to use more emotional words to convey a particular tone in their writing, and critical readers need to be aware of this literary device to maintain an objective view of the topic and not be subtly swayed by the author’s attitude.

In this worksheet, students will evaluate groups of words and identify the choice that suggests a more emotional response. The objective is for students to hone their ability to assess tone, connotation, and denotation through word choice.

Author: Sharon Haigler
Editor: Mary Landry, C. Anneke Snyder
Supervisor: Terri Pantuso

This is an overview of how to use MLA citations for college papers. It is an introduction with examples of works cited and in-text citations.

This two-part unit provides instructors with materials to encourage student development of information literacy skills. The unit can be understood as supplemental materials for the OER textbook Informed Arguments: A Guide to Writing and Research with particular focus on the research aspect of writing and argumentation, or the materials could be useful on its own, for instructors who do not teach with the Informed Arguments textbook. It addresses, most specifically, how to find and evaluate source material. It covers things like types of sources, biases, peer-review processes, and other information literacy skills helpful for successful college writing. It includes 1) general instructor notes, 2) an online discussion activity, 3) a quiz about evaluation of sources, 4) a Research Journal (short essay) assignment, 5) a rubric for the short essay, and 6) a further information resource guide for faculty about information literacy and the college classroom.

Part 1: https://pressbooks.library.tamu.edu/engl1301/chapter/research-and-argumentation-teacher-facing-lesson/
Part 2: https://pressbooks.library.tamu.edu/engl1301/chapter/research-and-information-literacy-student-facing-assignment/

Author: Michael Gardin
Editor: Mary Landry, C. Anneke Snyder
Supervisor: Terri Pantuso

This peer review resource is part of the Digital Design for Student Success (D2S2) project, a collaboration between Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB), Rice University, Texas A & M University, and The University of Texas. Peer review materials are designed for use in any course that uses writing--particularly writing flag (writing intensive) courses in the undergraduate curriculum.