This is an open-educational-resource (OER) composition textbook developed at McLennan Community College.  Its content is provided freely for use to writing instructors and students.  While this book has been designed for use in college-level, freshman-composition courses, if it serves your purposes in any other level of instruction, we are happy to share it with you.

The writings in this book were collected from students and their professors at Lansing Community College. The requirement was that the writings included needed to be something that had been submitted for a class at LCC and that it received a 3.0 or better. I wasn’t looking for perfect work. I was looking for good work. I hoped that the OER (Open Educational Resource) that resulted from this collection would help students and faculty learn about what teachers and students here were thinking and writing about. I hoped that student writers would feel some pride and satisfaction at seeing their work published and acknowledged as being good. I wasn’t worried about perfection, but I did ask instructors about what they would have recommended that students continue to work on to improve their writing, because especially student writing is a process. As I edited this work, I added a bit of punctuation and fixed some spelling, standardized fonts, and indicated paragraphs, but for the most part left the mechanics as they were. I wanted readers to be able to see the work that was submitted as it was submitted complete with mechanical flaws.Of course in writing classes we also work to polish format, but as one faculty member said to me, you have to have something to say!

The idea of perfection is worth consideration. Some of my colleagues seemed reluctant to encourage students to submit work because they seemed worried that the student work wouldn’t be good enough or would somehow reflect on them as instructors. But I know they give 3.0’s and 4.0’s and I know that students do work instructors judge as good enough. I especially liked hearing from the instructors who participated about what they valued; I think students and other instructors may also find that interesting. Over and over again I heard instructors value novelty, risk taking, and a clear writing voice.

I am grateful to the students who submitted their work and my colleagues who sat and talked with me about their students’ work. I am also grateful to the Lansing Community College Board of Trustees who agreed to fund this sabbatical project. The sabbatical I took during the Spring Semester of 2020 gave me time to reflect and celebrate the writing of students and think about and read more about publication of students’ writing. I am also grateful to Associate Professor of Integrated English Amy Larson—OER Project Manager and Professor of Economics James Luke who both consulted with me about creating this text to be housed at Open LCC. Thanks also to Lydia Warnke, one of the Department of Integrated English staff who helped me work on the formatting required by Open LCC. I would never have made the deadline without her help. Finally, thanks to Professor of Integrated English Jill Reglin who was my Sabbatical Committee Mentor; her encouragement was invaluable.

Because this is an OER perhaps a couple more examples were added during the summer of 2021. I hope other students will be inspired to add their pieces\ or at least develop more confidence about their writing in the future. To that end I have include the release form used for this project in the appendix. There is also a brief annotated bibliography discussing publishing student writing. Doing this research helped me see that there is a long history of discussion about publishing student writing and only beginning to be much current work on the topic. I hope to find more scholarly work being done about blogging, podcasts, and using modern media forms of publishing, but that is research for another day.

Have you ever received a writing assignment, thought “this won’t take long” and then stayed up all night writing the night before your assignment was due because it ended up taking a lot longer than you thought it would? If you have, you’re not alone. Many beginning writers struggle to plan well when it comes to a writing assignment, and this results in writing that is just not as good as it could be. When you wait until the last minute and fail to engage in a good writing process, you’re not doing your best work—even if you did “get all A’s in high school” as a procrastinator. In this step-by-step support area, you will find everything you need to know about writing a paper from start to finish.

This resource offers self-paced modules that will help you review key topics in writing. Each module provides instruction followed by review questions. The modules can be completed individually or in sequence. After completing a module, you have the option to download or print a completion report to share with a tutor, instructor, or save for posterity!

Writing Spaces is “an open textbook project for college-level writing studies courses. Each volume in the Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing series contains peer-reviewed collections of essays about writing—all composed by teachers for students”.

Third revision, August 2017.

Welcome to Writing Unleashed, designed for use as a textbook in first-year college composition programs, written as an extremely brief guide for students, jam-packed with teachers’ voices, students’ voices, and engineered for fun.

This textbook was created by Dana Anderson, Ronda Marman, and Sybil Priebe - all first-year college composition instructors at the North Dakota State College of Science in Wahpeton, ND.

Download here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1JoX94RjwS-WoPnGCyIZ9ZTQeX74iG9hS

This text offers instruction in analytical, critical, and argumentative writing, critical thinking, research strategies, information literacy, and proper documentation through the study of literary works from major genres, while developing students’ close reading skills and promoting an appreciation of the aesthetic qualities of literature.

In the age of Buzzfeeds, hashtags, and Tweets, students are increasingly favoring conversational writing and regarding academic writing as less pertinent in their personal lives, education, and future careers. Writing and Literature: Composition as Inquiry, Learning, Thinking and Communication connects students with works and exercises and promotes student learning that is kairotic and constructive. Dr. Tanya Long Bennett, professor of English at the University of North Georgia, poses questions that encourage active rather than passive learning. Furthering ideas presented in Contribute a Verse: A Guide to First-Year Composition as a complimentary companion, Writing and Literature builds a new conversation covering various genres of literature and writing. Students learn the various writing styles appropriate for analyzing, addressing, and critiquing these genres including poetry, novels, dramas, and research writing. The text and its pairing of helpful visual aids throughout emphasizes the importance of critical reading and analysis in producing a successful composition. Writing and Literature is a refreshing textbook that links learning, literature, and life.

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. For questions about this textbook please contact textbookuse@umn.edu

From Competence to Excellence

Short Description:
Return to milneopentextbooks.org to download PDF and other versions of this textNewParaWriting in College: From Competence to Excellence is designed for students who have largely mastered the conventions of high-school level writing and are now rising to meet more the advanced expectations of college. Students will find in Writing in College a warm invitation to think of themselves as full, self-motivated members of the academic community. With concise explanations, clear multi-disciplinary examples and empathy for the challenges of student life, this short textbook both explains the purposes behind college-level writing and offers indispensable advice for organization and expression.

Long Description:
Writing in College: From Competence to Excellence is designed for students who have largely mastered the conventions of high-school level writing and are now rising to meet more the advanced expectations of college. Students will find in Writing in College a warm invitation to think of themselves as full, self-motivated members of the academic community. With concise explanations, clear multi-disciplinary examples and empathy for the challenges of student life, this short textbook both explains the purposes behind college-level writing and offers indispensable advice for organization and expression.

Word Count: 37285

ISBN: 978-1-942341-21-5

(Note: This resource's metadata has been created automatically by reformatting and/or combining the information that the author initially provided as part of a bulk import process.)

The teaching of writing in colleges and universities tends to focus on academic essays and research papers. Writing in the disciplines, on the other hand, refers to writing assignments tailored to the genres of a specific discipline or field. For instance, a science course might require students to write a lab report, while a sociology course might assign a case study.

Writing the Nation: A Concise Guide to American Literature 1865 to Present is a text that surveys key literary movements and the American authors associated with the movement. Topics include late romanticism, realism, naturalism, modernism, and modern literature.

The course design, in-class activities, assignments, and citations here offer ways educators can use the writing process to improve student learning, focusing on undgraduate and early graduate work. These materials can be remixed and repurposed, in whole or in part, as you wish under the terms of a CC BY-NC 4.0 license. If you repurpose these materials for a particular discipline or context, an email about your work would be greatly appreciated!

This text is meant to be used in any first year College Composition class or as a general guide to college writing. The book focuses on writing as a process, not a product. The goal is to help students discover their own writing process, trying out different methods and strategies to find what works best for them.

Since writing is subjective, the rules aren’t always black and white. What can we do, if writing is subjective and doesn’t have PERFECT rules then? We just practice the genres we know. We give it our best shot. We just practice.