There is a quote that has been passed down many years and is most recently accounted to P.T. Barnum, “There is a sucker born every minute.” Are you that sucker? If you were, would you like to be “reborn?” The goal of this book is to help you through that “birthing” process. Critical thinking and standing up for your ideas and making decisions are important in both your personal and professional life. How good are we at making the decision to marry? According to the Centers for Disease Control, there is one divorce in America every 36 seconds. That is nearly 2,400 every day. And professionally, the Wall Street Journal predicts the average person will have 7 careers in their lifetime. Critical thinking skills are crucial.

This book is divided into two parts. Part I is a Composition Handbook designed to teach students the components of the writing process and the conventions of various forms of school and college writing assignments. Part II is an Anthology of Literature designed to help students read actively, analyze, understand, enjoy, and appreciate stories, poems, and plays by a diverse and inclusive group of exceptional writers.

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.

Most literature students are introduced to literary theory and writing about literature as separate subjects, though the two are intimately linked in the practice of literary scholarship. Literary scholarship is guided by literary theories and expressed through writing; it doesn’t make sense to learn each in isolation. Literary theories are intellectual models that scholars use to understand stories, novels, poems, plays, and other texts. Different theories prioritize different historical, social, or methodological concerns. The authors believe students of literature should learn about many literary theories so they can discover which interpretive tools work best for them when they write about literature in their classes (and beyond). This book aims to help students build up a personal toolbox of interpretive possibilities.

One of the primary goals of attending college is to become a critical thinker. As students evolve into lifelong learning they will have to navigate an incredible amount of information related to their studies and personal lives. The ability to explore their world will be dependent on their research and information literacy skills.

Arguments are all around us. Everywhere we look, someone is trying to get our attention, change our minds, or sell us something. Learning about how persuasion works will make you a more thoughtful and skeptical consumer of all that content, so that you can come to your own conclusions and recognize the underlying assumptions that inform those attempts to persuade you. This book is about analyzing others' arguments and crafting your own. The rhetorical choices that you make as a writer–from evidence to structure to tone–impact how your audience will receive your ideas. Using those tools effectively will help your voice be heard.

In this text, you'll study the ways that rhetoric and communication developed over time, you'll learn about the different rhetorical tools that are used in effective communication, and you'll learn how to employ those tools in your own compositions.

How Arguments Work takes students through the techniques they will need to respond to readings and make sophisticated arguments in any college class. This is a practical guide to argumentation with strategies and templates for the kinds of assignments students will commonly encounter. It covers rhetorical concepts in everyday language and explores how arguments can build trust and move readers.

This course is designed to introduce students to the study, analysis, and interpretation of literature across multiple genres. Key topics include literary genres and conventions; how to read and write about literature; literary analysis; and readings and responses in the genres of poetry, drama, fiction, and creative nonfiction. Primary literary works and critical responses are included, as well as a collection of writing assignments aligned with course content and learning outcomes.

This course was developed by faculty at Ivy Tech Community College, using original materials, as well as materials from NDLA.

This book is designed for a first college course in poetry. Assuming no prior knowledge of poetry, it guides the student through the most essential aspects of poetics, the tricky question of interpretation, and the importance of form. It also outlines, in several chapters, the ways that poetry has evolved over time.

An Introduction to Poetry, A Complete Online Course is designed for a first college course in poetry. Assuming no prior knowledge of poetry, it guides the student through the most essential aspects of poetics, the tricky question of interpretation, and the importance of form. It also outlines, in several chapters, the changing ways that poetry has presented itself from the late 16th century through the present.

Literature in the Humanities is an introduction to the study of the characteristics, conventions, and socio-historical contexts of the major literary forms, including the analysis and interpretation of literary elements and devices, and the application of literary theory and criticism. This course is designed to encourage a deep appreciation of literature, hone critical thinking skills, and to illustrate the importance of literature as an expression of the human cultural experience.

LIT2000, as well as all Humanities General Education courses, approaches the concept of culture as a system of meanings allowing groups and individuals to give significance to the world and mediate their relationships with each other and their known universe. Humanities courses are distinguished from traditional Liberal Arts disciplines through an emphasis on interdisciplinarity and comparative cultural contexts. Through these approaches to cultural texts and artifacts, the humanities attempt to investigate, contest, analyze, and synthesize the phenomena of human agency and subjectivity both within and between cultures. By pursuing these forms of inquiry we may better understand our world and our places within it. 1

Literature, the Humanities, and Humanity attempts to make the study of literature more than simply another school subject that students have to take. At a time when all subjects seem to be valued only for their testability, this book tries to show the value of reading and studying literature, even earlier literature. It shows students, some of whom will themselves become teachers, that literature actually has something to say to them. Furthermore, it shows that literature is meant to be enjoyed, that, as the Roman poet Horace (and his Renaissance disciple Sir Philip Sidney) said, the functions of literature are to teach and to delight. The book will also be useful to teachers who want to convey their passion for literature to their students. After an introductory chapter that offers advice on how to read (and teach) literature, the book consists of a series of chapters that examine individual literary works ranging from The Iliad to Charles Dickens’ Bleak House. These chapters can not substitute for reading the actual works. Rather they are intended to help students read those works. They are attempts to demystify the act of reading and to show that these works, whether they are nearly three thousand or less than two hundred years old, still have important things to say to contemporary readers.

"... When I first started teaching in 2015, I realized that many of my students didn’t fully appreciate that their stories were compelling. But then they started writing about growing up hearing gunshots and sirens at night, using fire escapes as basketball hoops, and a ritual I’d never heard of: dancing at Thanksgiving. One student wrote about how he and his brother, at ages 11 and 14, had to fend for themselves after their father was deported. As the students listened to each other, mesmerized, they came to realize that their own stories have the same effect on other people. That motivated them to learn literary techniques to weave their experiences into cohesive, artful narratives.

Many of the writers have since graduated and have become teachers and nurses; others are still in school or, having graduated, are struggling to find the kinds of jobs that they envisioned having, once they had earned a college degree. Yet, however their careers and their lives pan out, they know that continuing to cultivate their writing will give them some measure of power. Their stories of resilience and creativity reflect how American culture is enriched by their presence. To know them is to love them."

This is an anthology in progress of literature in English. It is designed to be a transatlantic anthology, with examples of texts written in the British Isles, but also colonial America, wand the United States. Many of the texts have been freshly edited and annotated to provide authoritative and curated editions for the use of students and general readers, and to create an alternative to expensive print anthologies. Over time, all of these texts (and more) will be edited and annotated to use the full resources enabled by the digitization of literary works. Please feel free to comment on these texts; we hope to improve the anthology based on the needs of readers.

The anthology is designed to work well on desktop and laptop computers, but also mobile devices like tablets and smartphones. We include the hypothes.is plug-in, which allows readers to add their own layer of annotation to the texts–to underscore key passages, add notes, ask questions. Go to www.hypothes.is for more information on how the plug-in works.

This is very much a work in progress. Some texts have been edited and annotated fully; others partially; others not at all. Author biographies are being drafted; material is being added. Keep checking back for updates.

This project is open-access, and the texts are available for anyone to use as they wish. We also invite others to join in the project by editing and annotating texts of their own, which can be incorporated in the site to create a free, open-access anthology of reliable works for use in the classroom.

Let’s start with an inescapable fact: you’ll be writing and communicating for the rest of your life whether you’re a second grade teacher, a corrections officer, an ER nurse, or a district manager at Target. You don’t want to sound like an idiot on paper or in person. People lose interviews, jobs, and respect when they write or communicate poorly. Simply put, developing effective writing and speaking skills can help you succeed far beyond the classroom.

This handbook is the product of much collaboration. In creating this resource, the faculty at KCC have attempted to distill their collective wisdom about writing and present that material in a concise and accessible way. This is by no means a complete reference for every English question you might encounter in your life; however, it is a collection of common issues and areas of concern that professors across all disciplines address.

This reading anthology is a curated collection of openly licensed full-text essays and stories on a variety of subjects, designed to be used for discussions and writing assignments. The anthology is organized according to three levels of reading difficulty, but instructors can easily mix and match reading selections.

This course introduces students to the genres of science-fiction and fantasy, focusing on major themes and how speculative fiction addresses contemporary human concerns.

For students and others who read it, this style manual quickly becomes a favorite resource. Whether planning a paper, running a grammar check, completing a report, composing an email, puzzling over a usage or grammar issue, or writing a resume or online portfolio, you are bound to find the material and examples you need in Style for Students Online. Drawing from his breadth of experience as a tutor, teacher, editor, and creative writer, Joe Schall provides technical writing advice that spans from the conceptual to the niggling. Thoughtful, practical, up-to-date, and rich in pith, Style for Students Online should be bookmarked as one of your oft-visited websites.

This anthology is a curated collection of openly licensed primary texts, organized thematically, designed to be used as a reader in English composition courses. Includes personal essays, literature, video and audio files, Web writings, and long-form journalism, along with customizable assignments and instructor resources. This anthology was initially curated by Lumen Learning using materials from a variety of open sources.