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.

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

Bad Ideas About Writing counters major myths about writing instruction. Inspired by the provocative science- and social-science-focused book This Idea Must Die and written for a general audience, the collection offers opinionated, research-based statements intended to spark debate and to offer a better way of teaching writing. Contributors, as scholars of rhetoric and composition, provide a snapshot of and antidotes to major myths in writing instruction. This collection is published in whole by the Digital Publishing Institute at WVU Libraries and in part by Inside Higher Ed.

Basic Reading and Writing builds a solid foundation around core aspects of the writing process: critical reading; methodical writing; research and documentation; practical grammar and punctuation. An optional module introduces core principles for college success that help students understand and develop good habits to improve their performance in this and other college courses. As the first in a three-course sequence that culminates in Composition I (college-level composition), Basic Reading and Writing focuses on helping students identify and apply foundational concepts and skills in reading and writing. Course content may be used for standard instruction or diagnostically to discover and address gaps in student understanding/skill.

Online OER text adapted for use in ENGL 101 - Rhetoric & Composition by Amber Kinonen, Jennifer McCann, Todd McCann, and Erica Mead for Bay College.

© 2017 Bay College and Content Creators. Except where otherwise noted this work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

Brehe’s Grammar Anatomy makes grammar accessible to general and specialist readers alike. This book provides an in-depth look at beginner grammar terms and concepts, providing clear examples with limited technical jargon. Whether for academic or personal use, Brehe’s Grammar Anatomy is the perfect addition to any resource library.

Here you’ll find extensive support for APA, MLA, and Chicago documentation styles. This section features instructional videos that show you how to set up your papers in APA, MLA, and Chicago formats, interactive checklists, and visual support for both in-text documenting and referencing at the end of your paper. If you’re new to documentation or just need a refresher, the Citations & Documentation area can help.

This is volume 2 of a a two-part instructional text series for first-year composition students. Volume 2 is intended for students who have some college composition and rhetoric knowledge and experience.

Composition 1: Introduction to Academic Writing was created with the intention of providing a free, comprehensive Composition 1 textbook to the students of Connors State College in Oklahoma. This textbook is a compilation of several OER textbooks and resources with edits, revisions, and additions provided by Brittany Seay. This composition 1 textbook covers academic writing in its most basic definition.

Chapter 1 covers what is academic writing, who does it, and why
Chapter 2 covers the rhetorical modes used in academic writing
Chapter 3 covers rhetorical analysis
Chapter 4 covers the basic parts of a standard academic essay
Chapter 5 covers the academic argument
The last section of the book is a collection of 88 open essays

Composition 2: Research and Writing was created with the intention of providing a free, comprehensive Composition 2 textbook to the students of Connors State College in Oklahoma. This textbook is a compilation of several OER textbooks and resources with edits, revisions, and additions provided by Brittany Seay. This textbook focuses on the ins and outs of academic writing and research. It looks at the early stages of research from generating ideas and key term searches to creating projects that synthesize the information found from sources. This textbook also discusses academic writing with a particular focus on research writing.

Chapter 1 covers the idea behind research and why it is important
Chapter 2 covers finding and reading academic sources
Chapter 3 covers using the information found in academic sources
Chapter 4 covers putting together an academic research argument

This book reimagines the college essay by exploring how the process develops across a number of modalities and subjectivities.

Creating her own assignments using openly licensed course materials allows this professor and her students to be more creative and to take greater advantage of digital resources.

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.

English Composition II is an expository writing course that helps students develop more advanced writing skills than English Composition I. The course also reviews and incorporates some of the same skills. This course teaches research skills by emphasizing the development of advanced analytical/critical reading skills, proficiency in investigative research, and the writing of persuasive prose including documented and researched argumentative essays. A major component of this course will be an emphasis on the research process and information literacy. This course is based on the materials faculty developed for English Composition II as a part of the Kaleidoscope Open Course Initiative (KOCI).

This course develops students’ writing at the college level, using materials organized around essential parts of the academic writing process. Key topics include rhetorical situations; the editing process; types and modes of academic writing; the research process; citation practices; informative and persuasive writing.

This course is designed to introduce you to the writing, reading, and thinking skills you will need for success at the college level. The course will emphasize personal, reflective, and expository writing. It will also help you develop critical reading skills, which will assist you as you analyze specific writing techniques and strategies you can use to improve your own writing.

Written by Steve Poulter, it presents a different way of teaching writing to students. The method is “writing with the teacher present” or simply students doing ALL their writing in class. This way of teaching writing is more like athletic practice than class. Students practice writing while the coach (professor or instructor) was around to break steps down into smaller and smaller elements and to help them learn the skills “in real time.

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.

This book combines the Introduction to Writing in College by Melanie Gagich and ENG 102: Reading, Writing and Research by Emilie Zickel, which were both supported by Cleveland State University’s 2017 Textbook Affordability Small Grant.

Welcome to composition and rhetoric! While most of you are taking this course because it is required, we hope that all of you will leave with more confidence in your reading, writing, researching, and speaking abilities as these are all elements of freshman composition.