How to Read Literature Like a Professor - Chapter Presentations

This lesson was created from a variety of online resources and questions related to Thomas Foster's book How to Read Literature Like a Professor. Although this lesson was created for a semester-long dual credit literature course for 11th and 12th graders, it could also be used for any advanced language arts class.This lesson was created by Janelle Coady as part of the 2020 OER English Language Arts Workshop by NDE. It is expected that this plan will take approximately two weeks to complete, including the presentations. Students are expected to follow the guidelines and cite all sources used and adhere to the time constraints as well. "Book Cover" by Mariam Sargsyan 17, Wikimedia Commons is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Material Type: Homework/Assignment, Primary Source, Reading

Author: Janelle Coady

Using Critical Thinking To Write About Literature

Using critical thinking questions to determine to what extent two stories meet the criteria of their genres as well as how they might compare and/or contrast. Created by Alan Mitnick, Passaic County Community College (NJ)

Material Type: Activity/Lab

Authors: Kenneth Ronkowitz, Alan Mitnick

Beyond facts and statistics: Restoring order to how we understand logos in writing

This resource aims to generate ideas and possibilities about how to advance student understanding of logic in writing beyond the notion that logic is always a collection of data points or a reference to facts. Instead of reducing logic to numbers and statements, this source hopes to introduce students and teachers to the existential questions that are always involved in the logical appeals of a text: how do we know what we know and why does it matter?

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Homework/Assignment, Lecture Notes

Author: Bryan Harvey

Naming the Unnameable: An Approach to Poetry for New Generations

Short Description: Return to milneopentextbooks.org to download PDF and other versions of this textNewParaBonczek Evory approaches the act of writing poetry from a practitioner’s perspective and as an act of play. The text provides strategies and detailed practices that nurture and maintain creative states necessary for all stages of writing. Long Description: Bonczek Evory approaches the act of writing poetry from a practitioner’s perspective and as an act of play. The text provides strategies and detailed practices that nurture and maintain creative states necessary for all stages of writing. Word Count: 58614 ISBN: 978-1-942341-49-9 (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.)

Material Type: Textbook

Author: Michelle Bonczek Evory

The Oregon State Guide to English Literary Terms

This free video series provides definitions of literary terms in English literature to students and teachers. It also offers examples of how these literary devices can be applied to poems, plays, novels, and short stories. We are in the process of translating the videos into Spanish and many of them now contain these subtitles.

Material Type: Lesson

Authors: Oregon State University, School of Writing Literature and Film

Composition II: The Things We All Carry

This course incorporates original OER materials with readings from the novel The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien, a gripping and compassionate account of a platoon of U.S. soldiers in the Vietnam War and readings from the textbook Composition II from Lumen Learning. The course will challenge students in their reading and writing skills while providing them with a historical and cultural context to better understand war, peace, and the human condition.

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

Author: Katie Durant

The Tragedy of Othello the Moor of Venice

The Folger Shakespeare Library provides the full searchable text of "Othello" to read online or download as a PDF. All of the lines are numbered sequentially to make it easier and more convenient to find any line.

Material Type: Reading

Author: William Shakespeare

Argument & Critical Thinking

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

Argument Essay: Purpose and Organization

Basic purpose and organization of a five-paragraph, argument essay. Audience: Community College Transitional English Instructors.

Material Type: Lecture Notes

Author: Dr. Lisa B. Martin

Argumentative Essay Video (link)

Explanation and overview of the argumentative or persuasive essay. 9-minute video.

Material Type: Diagram/Illustration

Author: Jessica Temple

Composition and Literature

A Handbook and Anthology Short Description: 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. Long Description: 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. Word Count: 513391 ISBN: 978-1-77420-024-7 (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.)

Material Type: Textbook

Authors: Derek Soles, James Sexton

Composition I

An introductory course that focuses on sentence and paragraph structure, title development, and writing by method, including narration, description, process, compare/contrast, cause and effect, persuasion, and more. A solid overview of citations and sources, as well as thesis statements and conclusions, is also provided. 

Material Type: Reading, Unit of Study

Author: Stephanie Pesce

Writing Commons

Writing Commons aspires to be a community for writers, a creative learning space for students in courses that require college-level writing, a creative, interactive space for teachers to share resources and pedagogy. Our primary goal is to provide the resources and community students need to improve their writing, particularly students enrolled in courses that require college-level writing. As mentioned in 'About Us', we believe learning materials should be free for all students and teachers‰ part of the cultural commons. Hence, we provide free access to an award-winning, college textbook that was published by a major publisher and awarded the Distinguished Book Award by Computers and Composition: an International Journal.

Material Type: Reading, Textbook

Big Grammar Book

** This book has been donated to the public domain.** From the introduction: Hello there . . . ! Welcome to English Banana.com’s Big Grammar Book. It’s the third fantastic book from English Banana and the aim this time is to practise grammar, grammar and, er, more grammar! It’s jam-packed from cover to cover with a great selection of photocopiable worksheets taken from the popular English Banana.com website. We wanted to provide teachers with a really useful book of no-nonsense grammar worksheets that they can dip into and use in class with students at Entry Level (ESOL Core Curriculum Entry Levels 1 & 2). It is also ideal for students to work with at home since the answers are all printed at the back. The book is divided into four parts and is graded in difficulty, so that it begins with some basic stuff and builds up to more challenging grammar activities. It features a selection of Essential English worksheets which provide practice for crucial basic areas of knowledge for learners at Entry Level, like using numbers, writing the alphabet, spelling days and months correctly, and so on.

Material Type: Textbook

Author: Matt Purland

English Composition I: Using Varied Sources

A lesson for English Composition I that includes a PowerPoint lecture, resources about writing ,and plagiarism.

Material Type: Lecture Notes, Lesson, Teaching/Learning Strategy, Unit of Study

Author: Clare Thompson-Ostrander

Web Literacy for Student Fact Checkers

This is an unabashedly practical guide for the student fact-checker. It supplements generic information literacy with the specific web-based techniques that can get you closer to the truth on the web more quickly. We will show you how to use date filters to find the source of viral content, how to assess the reputation of a scientific journal in less than five seconds, and how to see if a tweet is really from the famous person you think it is or from an impostor. We’ll show you how to find pages that have been deleted, figure out who paid for the web site you’re looking at, and whether the weather portrayed in that viral video actual matches the weather in that location on that day. We’ll show you how to check a Wikipedia page for recent vandalism, and how to search the text of almost any printed book to verify a quote. We’ll teach you to parse URLs and scan search result blurbs so that you are more likely to get to the right result on the first click. And we’ll show you how to avoid baking confirmation bias into your search terms.

Material Type: Textbook

Author: Mike Caulfield

Style for Students: A Writing Guide

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.

Material Type: Full Course, Textbook

Writing Refresher

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!

Material Type: Module

Compact Anthology of World Literature

The introductions in this anthology are meant to be just that: a basic overview of what students need to know before they begin reading, with topics that students can research further. An open access literature textbook cannot be a history book at the same time, but history is the great companion of literature: The more history students know, the easier it is for them to interpret literature.

Material Type: Textbook

Authors: Kyounghye Kwon, Laura Getty