All resources in San Jacinto College English Department

Rhetorical Styles

(View Complete Item Description)

In the Rhetorical Styles area of the Excelsior OWL, you’ll learn about different rhetorical styles or, essentially, different strategies for developing your essays and other writing assignments. These basic strategies are not all encompassing but will provide you with a foundation and a flexibility to help you as you engage in writing assignments in your introductory writing classes and beyond.

Material Type: Module

EmpoWord 111

(View Complete Item Description)

EmpoWord is a reader and rhetoric that champions the possibilities of student writing. The textbook uses actual student writing to exemplify effective writing strategies, celebrating dedicated college writing students to encourage and instruct their successors: the students in your class. Through both creative and traditional activities, readers are encouraged to explore a variety of rhetorical situations to become more critical agents of reading, writing, speaking, and listening in all facets of their lives. Straightforward and readable instruction sections introduce key vocabulary, concepts, and strategies. Three culminating assignments (Descriptive Personal Narrative; Text-Wrestling Analysis; Persuasive Research Essay) give students a chance to show their learning while also practicing rhetorical awareness techniques for future writing situations.Shane Abrams is the original author. Doug Bourne and University of Alaska Anchorage Writing Department adapted his work to develop this text.

Material Type: Reading

Authors: Doug Bourne, Shane Abrams

Putting the Pieces Together

(View Complete Item Description)

Putting the Pieces Together: Reason and Writing for Success is a text that provides instruction in steps, builds writing, reading, and critical thinking, and combines comprehensive grammar review with an introduction to paragraph writing and composition; This text is designed as a companion resource to WRIT: Reason and Writing, which is Fanshawe College's introductory writing curriculum.

Material Type: Textbook

Authors: André Cormier, Andrew Stracuzzi

Avoiding Plagiarism

(View Complete Item Description)

We know you have come to this tutorial because you are a serious writer who wants to write well — and correctly! You have probably heard the word plagiarism and would like to understand it better. You have come to the right place. In this tutorial, you’ll learn: What plagiarism is How to recognize seven different kinds of plagiarism The correct way to use ‘open access’ materials The consequences of plagiarism How to avoid plagiarism by doing the following: Citing sources correctly Recognizing ‘common knowledge’ Writing good paraphrases Writing good summaries Taking careful notes

Material Type: Module

Argument & Critical Thinking

(View Complete Item Description)

In this learning area, you will learn how to develop an argumentative essay and stronger critical thinking skills. This learning area will help you develop your arguments, understand your audience, evaluate source material, approach arguments rhetorically, and avoid logical fallacies. Here, you’ll also learn about evaluating other arguments and creating digital writing projects related to your argument.

Material Type: Module

Conventions 101: A Functional Approach to Teaching (and Assessing!) Grammar and Punctuation

(View Complete Item Description)

This is a collection of cumulative units of study for conventional errors common in student writing. It's flexible, functional, and zeroes in problems typically seen in writing of all types, from the eternal "there/they're/their" struggle to correct colon use. Units are organized from most simple to most challenging.

Material Type: Teaching/Learning Strategy

Author: Chauna Ramsey

Composition I Anthology

(View Complete Item Description)

This Composition Reader is an edited, curated collection of OER material for you to use as you see fit in your course.  It consists of personal essays, literature, video and audio files, web writing, and long-form journalism.

Material Type: Full Course, Textbook

English Composition I (ENGL 101)

(View Complete Item Description)

English 101 focuses on the analysis of basic human issues as presented in literature with an emphasis on analytic reading, writing and discussion, and on development of argumentative essays based on textual analysis, with attention to style, audience and documentation. By writing several analytical, thesis-driven essays which show engagement with and understanding of a variety of texts, students will practice the critical thinking, reading and writing skills which comprise an important component of college and university studies as well as clear, audience-appropriate communications in other professional settings.This class is comprised of a series of three units, each of which is centered around an essay assignment. For each unit, in addition to the essay itself, you‰ŰŞll be asked to respond to reading assignments and to complete exploratory writing assignments. You‰ŰŞll do a lot of reading and writing, and your instructor will ask you to respond to ideas from our texts, from specific assignments, and from each other. Login: guest_oclPassword: ocl

Material Type: Full Course, Homework/Assignment, Lecture Notes, Lesson Plan, Reading, Syllabus

Grammar Essentials

(View Complete Item Description)

This is a great question you might be asking yourself, and if you’re not asking it, you probably should be. If you are a native speaker of English, you don’t even have to think about it to use grammar correctly, at least for the most part. If you have ever watched a child develop language, you know that, at a very young age, children know what is necessary for language to make sense.

Material Type: Module

English Composition: Connect, Collaborate, Communicate

(View Complete Item Description)

This OER textbook has been designed for students to learn the foundational concepts for English 100 (first-year college composition). The content aligns to learning outcomes across all campuses in the University of Hawai'i system. It was designed, written, and edited during a three day book sprint in May, 2019.

Material Type: Textbook

Authors: Ann Inoshita, Jeanne K. Tsutsui Keuma, Karyl Garland, Kate Sims, Tasha Williams

The Worry Free Writer

(View Complete Item Description)

The Worry Free Writer is the product of over 20 years of experience in teaching composition. Dr. Palmer directs students through the Writing Process, while teaching them a simple Writing Formula that they can use to help take the stress out of writing for academic purposes.

Material Type: Textbook

Author: Karen Palmer

Guide to Grammar: Oregon State University

(View Complete Item Description)

From the site: "In the Oregon State Guide to Grammar, our professors define grammar terms, explain grammatical conventions, identify parts of speech and constructions, and help students toward a better awareness of their own linguistic intuition. The video series is designed to be a free, online, creative commons (CC BY) resource for high school and college English teachers and students, offering them tools to engage meaningfully with challenging grammatical issues."

Material Type: Data Set, Reading, Student Guide

Author: Oregon State University

English 100 Course Readings

(View Complete Item Description)

English 100 is designed to emphasize writing as a process of discovery and to give you many opportunities for the kind of practice that builds self-knowledge. Some of the readings you’ll do for this course will provide examples of effective writing. Others will focus on “writing practices” that provide ideas for approaching any writing project, though especially writing in this course. Invention, drafting, research, revision, and editing can be considered stages of the writing process, but this process is rarely linear. Most writers move between these stages as they discover new ideas and information, come up with fresh ways to say things, and adjust their lines of reasoning. You’ll move through this recursive process several times during the semester as you explore and develop ideas; sharpen and clarify descriptions, narratives, and arguments; and, finally, present your work in clear, organized, and effective ways.

Material Type: Reading

Author: UW-Madison English 100 Program

"ENGL 1301-English Composition I" by Glenn Shaheen, Ymitri Mathison et al.

(View Complete Item Description)

This OER packet contains the course materials for ENGL 1301 - English Composition I . In academic settings, the reasons for writing fulfill four main purposes: to summarize, to analyze, to synthesize, and to evaluate. You will encounter these four purposes not only as you read for your classes but also as you read for work or pleasure. Because reading and writing work together, your writing skills will improve as you read. Eventually, your instructors will ask you to complete assignments specifically designed to meet one of the four purposes. As you will see, the purpose for writing will guide you through each part of the paper, helping you make decisions about content and style. For now, identifying these purposes by reading paragraphs will prepare you to write individual paragraphs and to build longer assignments.

Material Type: Full Course

Authors: Delinda Marzette -stuckey, Glenn Shaheen, Mathison Ymitri, Prairie View A M University, Richard Schmitt, Schmitt Richard, Shaheen Glenn, -stuckey Delinda Marzette, Ymitri Mathison

English 1301 (Comp. I) - Rhetoric and the Workplace

(View Complete Item Description)

This resource is an assignment for English 1301 (Composition 1) focused on the role of rhetoric in workplace writing. For this assignment, students prepare a job application packet consisting of a resume and cover letter. To do this, students must find an actual job advertisement posted online (or a job description) to include with their assignment. Students use their knowledge of the rhetorical situation and models of appropriate workplace writing (available from most college and university Career Centers, as well as from the Purdue OWL and UNC Writing Center websites online) to prepare an application packet tailored to the position they want. This assignment provides students with an opportunity to apply what they've learned in class toward a concrete, meaningful goal, and most students respond positively to it.

Material Type: Homework/Assignment

Author: Jessica Zbeida

Generating Ideas for Writing - English 1301

(View Complete Item Description)

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.  

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Homework/Assignment, Lecture Notes, Module, Teaching/Learning Strategy, Textbook

Author: Joy Pasini

Documenting & Citing: MLA Style

(View Complete Item Description)

This assignment asks students to take bibliographic data and generate a properly formatted MLA citation. After completing questions #1-8, they are then asked to create 3 properly formatted in-text citations in MLA style. Finally, they are asked to take the first 8 citations and turn them into a properly formatted reference sheet, attached to the end of the worksheet. Depending on skill level, the instructor may choose to allow them to use an aid (like Purdue Owl) to construct the citations or do them from memory. This assignment is best used to assess students’ understanding of MLA and provide them with low-stakes practice of these formatting skills.

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Assessment, Homework/Assignment

Authors: Hannah Bowling, Terri Pantuso

Let's Get Writing!

(View Complete Item Description)

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.

Material Type: Textbook

Authors: Elizabeth Browning, Jenifer Kurtz, Katelyn Burton, Kathy Boylan, Kirsten Devries