KA's historian Kim Kutz Elliott talks about strategies for improving your historical essays.

Textbook for introductory composition, focusing on writing processes, essay writing, and research writing.

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

This book explores the essential elements, processes. and techniques of successful academic writing. Focusing on significant developments in technology, learning styles, and cultural competencies, readers are introduced to the various critical stages of the essay writing process; with relevant links, exercises, and downloadable handouts.

One of the most important lessons a student can learn in their English Language Arts class is how to critically think and communicate those ideas. As teachers, we strive to implement these two fundamental lessons within every class we teach. Essay writing, although a pain to many of our students, will help prepare our students for the world ahead of them. Our students will be expected to critically think through situations that they arise during the course of the lives and will most certainly be expected to respond. Though our students may not engross themselves into the depths of literature after they graduate, it is still just as important to instill a sense of literacy, education, culture, and critically responsive thoughts.

The reason why Randall Fallows wrote Exploring Perspectives: A Concise Guide to Analysis is simple; to help give students a better understanding of how to discover, develop, and revise an analytical essay. Here is how his 5 chapter book goes about doing just that:The first two chapters focus on the nature of an analysis and what’s involved in writing an analytical essay. First, Randall shows that analysis consists of a balance of assertions (statements which present their viewpoints or launch an exploration of their concerns), examples (specific passages/scenes/events which inspire these views), explanations (statements that reveal how the examples support the assertions), and significance (statements which reveal the importance of their study to personal and/or cultural issues).After showing why each feature should be present throughout an essay, he reveals how to ”set the stage“ for producing one of their own. He first helps students to evaluate their own views on a subject and to examine how these views emerge from their own experiences, values and judgments. He, then, shows them how to research what others have said about the subject and provides suggestions for evaluating and incorporating this research into their own perspectives.Finally, Randall discusses the nature of writing, not as a linear procedure, but as a recursive process where the discovery and clarification of a concept occur simultaneously.The remaining three chapters reveal more specific advice on how to develop an analytical essay.Exploring Perspectives: A Concise Guide to Analysis by Randall Fallows is a great text to prepare any student to write analytical essays for the argument and persuasion courses.

Students will form two groups, and each group will analyze a still life. Then each student will write a three-paragraph essay describing how to draw the work of art they are studying. Each student will exchange his or her essay with someone in the other group who will draw the still life based on the essay's description. Depending on the accuracy of their peers' drawings, students will add more details to their essays.

Many tests will require you to write a timed essay. You may feel panicked at the idea of having to produce a high-quality essay under a tight time constraint. But you can relax: this video shows you four basic steps to follow so that you can write a great essay quickly.

The current climate in university campuses is rather heterogeneous as a result of students’ diversity. This is an important issue that appeals to the teachers and students to find appropriate ways to create friendly relationships and atmosphere in the classrooms.

This is a collection of complex texts, both literary and informational, which can be used to develop text dependent analysis skills appropriate for grade 8.  For each text, there is at least one TDA prompt (in separate documents).  

The citing and referencing module is part of a wider online tutorial designed to teach a range of information skills to undergraduate students.

The module aims to provide an introductory guide to why referencing and citing is important and how to reference particular types of material according to different referencing styles. This skill is required by students throughout their degree courses and backs up more traditional face-to-face teaching in this area. The module uses an interactive approach, using activities to help students fully understand the concepts of referencing.

A short quiz on CCSS.W.9-10.5. This quiz uses errors common in African American Vernacular English in inner-city Detroit 2013. The types of errors were taken from student examples. There are 36 major errors that students should identify.

This is a collaborative activity where students will rate the strengths and weaknesses of five sample essays based on the conventions of writing effective academic essay as presented in the course text and class lectures. Previous training should consider the various type of introductions present in the discipline such as inverted triangle, paradox, narrative, minding the gap, and interrogative/asking a question.

Students read each introduction individually in their groups and then have a discussion on the merits of each based on previously established criteria, rating each essay from a one to a five with one represent the highest quality. Afterwards, the class can collectively discuss the results.

This resource is useful in a first-year composition course. The examples are intended for a literature-based composition class. There are also examples of opening strategies intended for an expository composition class. The Word version will give both types of examples.

Tolerance-Why are we as a people so intolerant of others whether from the present, past or future?Students will have the ability to identify injustices that have been committed throughout the world. Whether this is of recent origin in society or it is remnants from World Wars, you will identify the intolerance and educate the reader throughout your Research Paper. Throughout this semester the theme of this class has been intolerance. We have discussed this in our classes, on paper with discussion questions and by watching videos. Now you will have a chance to select your topic and arrive upon a thesis that will engage and answer the questions that you have about the intolerance of the world and its' people.