Recommended OER Texts and readings

In the Fall 2024 semester, 79 English sections used OER texts, which saved students over $155,000 in textbook costs! Please continue to use and explore OER texts for your classes!

For a collection of OER Resources for English 1101, view the pressbook by Jillian Grauman and Mary Childers.

Below is a list of separate OER texts and readings especially curated to align with our course objectives for ENGLISH 1101: Composition 1. You'll find materials for both yourself and your students. These sources have been vetted by the Composition Steering Committee and are *free* texts that you and your students can use as you work towards achieving the course objectives.

Many thanks go out to the folks at the Writing Commons, the authors and editors of Writing Spaces, and finally the WAC Clearinghouse.

OBJECTIVE 1

Practice writing as a process involving inquiry and invention, composing, response from instructor and peers, revision, and editing according to appropriate conventions.

Recommended Texts

Situating Writing Processes (2019)

FOR FACULTY:

“Introduction” to Situating Writing Processes
by Hannah J. Rule

An explanation of “writing processes” as situated, context-specific, and responsive within differences. The text complicates the K-12 understanding of “writing process” (brainstorming, drafting, revising) that so many English 1101 students know and reorients them toward our course objectives. According to the abstract, Rule "ultimately emphasizes vulnerability: how all writing involves risk, uncertainty, and the possibility of failure, as processes are susceptible to the participation and control of forces on ranging scales and always in excess of the writer alone."

Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing, Volume 1 (2010)

FOR YOUR STUDENTS:

"So You've Got a Writing Assignment. Now What?"
by Corrine E. Hinton

FROM THE ABSTRACT: This chapter gives students practical strategies for interpreting writing assignments, including how to identify important rhetorical elements, how to calculate and respond to common expectations, and how to recognize and discuss specific points of confusion.

Recommended Readings

"So You've Got a Writing Assignment? Now What? by Corinne E. Hinton
Introduction to Situating Writing Processes
"One Sentence at a Time: The Need for Explicit Instruction in Teaching Students to Write Well." by Judith C. Hochman and Natalie Wexler

OBJECTIVE 2

Analyze rhetorical situations as they relate to discourse communities.

Recommended Texts

Composition Forum 37 (Fall 2017)

FOR FACULTY:

"The Concept of Discourse Community: Some Recent Personal History"
by John Swales

This source is helpful both with respect to defining the term “discourse community” and by providing an updated take on the concept that is particularly aware of the global & digital environment we now live in. Swales shows how verbal and social behaviors adapt to new environments, providing students a rhetorical framework to "survive and flourish in their diverse educational environments."

Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing, Volume 3 (2020)

FOR YOUR STUDENTS:

"Understanding Discourse Communities"
by Dan Melzer

FROM THE ABSTRACT: This chapter uses John Swales’ definition of discourse community to explain to students why this concept is important for college writing and beyond... [also] explains how genres operate within discourse communities, why different discourse communities have different expectations for writing, and how to understand what qualifies as a discourse community. The article concludes with writerly questions students can ask themselves as they enter new discourse communities in order to be more effective communicators.

Recommended Readings

OBJECTIVE 3

Identify particular audiences and appropriate rhetorical moves, strategies, and/or responses.

Recommended Texts

A Rhetoric of Literate Action (2013)

FOR FACULTY:

"Rhetorics of Speaking & Writing"
by Charles Bazerman

We wouldn't necessarily recommend assigning Bazerman to your Comp 1 & 2 students, but this this text contextualizes rhetorical modes and the writing process. The text is said to be intended for "the experienced writer with a substantial repertoire of skills, [who] now would find it useful to think in more fundamental strategic terms about what they want their texts to accomplish, what form the texts might take, how to develop specific contents, and how to arrange the work of writing."

Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing, Volume 1 (2010)

FOR YOUR STUDENTS:

"Backpacks vs. Briefcases: Steps Toward Rhetorical Analysis"
by Laura Bolin Carroll

FROM THE ABSTRACT: Students are digital natives who spend their days saturated in rhetorical messages that they have learned to decode quite well...This chapter helps students understand the rhetorical skills they already possess, transfer these skills to classroom projects, and become familiar with basic terms of rhetorical analysis used in the academy.

Recommended Readings

"Backpacks vs. Briefcases: Steps Towards a Rhetorical Analysis

OBJECTIVE 4

Demonstrate engagement with intellectually complex writing situations, accounting for multiple perspectives via readings, visual media, and other texts.

Recommended Texts

Digital Rhetoric: Theory, Method, Practice (2015)

FOR FACULTY:

"Defining and Locating Digital Rhetoric"
by Douglas Eyman

FROM THE ABSTRACT: What is "digital rhetoric"? This book aims to answer that question by looking at a number of interrelated histories, as well as evaluating a wide range of methods and practices from fields in the humanities, social sciences, and information sciences to determine what might constitute the work and the world of digital rhetoric.

Open English @ SLCC: Texts on Writing, Language, and Literacy (2016)

FOR YOUR STUDENTS:

"Multi-Modal Communication: Writing in Five Modes"
by Ann Fillmore

A concise, rudimentary explanation on how to communicate meaning beyond the written word alone. This chapter provides a framework by which multi-modality is an important rhetorical decision that writers need to consider. Provides definitions and examples of 5 different rhetorical modalities: linguistic, visual, aural, gestural, & spacial.

Recommended Readings

OBJECTIVE 5

Create texts, including essays, in print and/or digital formats that respond to varied rhetorical situations.

Recommended Texts

Digital Rhetoric: Theory, Method, Practice (2015)

FOR FACULTY:

"Defining and Locating Digital Rhetoric"
by Douglas Eyman

FROM THE ABSTRACT: What is "digital rhetoric"? This book aims to answer that question by looking at a number of interrelated histories, as well as evaluating a wide range of methods and practices from fields in the humanities, social sciences, and information sciences to determine what might constitute the work and the world of digital rhetoric.

Open English @ SLCC: Texts on Writing, Language, and Literacy (2016)

FOR YOUR STUDENTS:

"Multi-Modal Communication: Writing in Five Modes"
by Ann Fillmore

A concise, rudimentary explanation on how to communicate meaning beyond the written word alone. This chapter provides a framework by which multi-modality is an important rhetorical decision that writers need to consider. Provides definitions and examples of 5 different rhetorical modalities: linguistic, visual, aural, gestural, & spacial.

Recommended Readings

OBJECTIVE 6

Use suitable methods of citation.

Recommended Texts

Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing, Volume 2 (2011)

FOR FACULTY:

"Annoying Ways People Use Sources"
by Kyle D. Stedman

FROM THE ABSTRACT: This chapter draws attention to the rhetorical nature of a writer’s choices when citing sources, emphasizing that readers may feel emotions like annoyance (or worse) when authors fail to cite in the ways expected by the audience. You can help your students avoid “annoying” rhetorical behaviors with this chapter, a brief primer on citation conventions for the Modern Language Association style. Students will enjoy reading about each “annoyance,” illustrated through positive and negative examples designed to show both the most common ways that writers make these mistakes and practical ways to fix them.

Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing, Volume 2 (2011)

FOR YOUR STUDENTS:

"Everything Changes, or Why MLA Isn’t (Always) Right"
by Janice Walker

FROM THE ABSTRACT: Citing sources for an academic writing project can seem a bit like trying to hit a moving target—the rules keep changing (they’re more like guidelines anyway). In this chapter, you and your students can explore citation as a rhetorical practice, one which does not always fit within the boundaries of traditional style guides but that nonetheless follows a logic that students can learn.

Recommended Readings

Purdue Owl

OBJECTIVE 7

Produce reflective writing for self-assessment.

Recommended Texts

Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing, Volume 3 (2020)

FOR FACULTY:

"Weaving Personal Experience Into Academic Writing"
by Marjorie Stewart

Technically speaking, this chapter isn’t about self-assessment per se, but it does focus on the importance of using personal experience as a guide and resource in the writing process. It includes useful student examples that could be helpful to show students, especially with the understanding that academic writing doesn’t necessitate removing yourself from the conversation.

Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing, Volume 1 (2010)

FOR YOUR STUDENTS:

"Reflective Writing and the Revision Process: What Were You Thinking?"
by Sandra Giles

FROM THE ABSTRACT: This essay explains to students that reflective writing involves their thinking about their own thinking. They may be asked to reflect about their audience and purpose for a piece of writing. They may write about their invention, drafting, revision, and editing processes. They may self-assess or evaluate their writing, learning, and development as writers. These activities help cement learning. They also help writers gain more insight into and control over composing and revising processes by helping them gain critical distance and by providing a mechanism for them to do the re-thinking and re-seeing that effective revision requires.

Recommended Readings