Resources for the teacher new to teaching writing and oral communications

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GENERAL RESOURCES
THE FIRST YEAR: GENERAL RESOURCES AND SLU's FYP:

• National Surveys of First-Year Curricular and Co-Curricular Practices (Policy Center on the First Year of College)
  
• SLU First Year Program: Faculty resources: Philosophy and goals (Residential component, Communications skills component)
  Syllabi: FYP: Fall 2002, FYS: Spring 2003

PRINT RESOURCES: (Books for either students or teachers)

• Carl Koch and James M. Brazil, Strategies for Teaching the Composition Process (ODY Library) (1978) -- Dozens of exercises for the various stages of the writing process.
  
• Quentin L. Gehle and Duncan J. Rollo, The Writing Process (1977: ODY Library): Lots of useful exercises. Appendices follow an essay and a (short) term paper through the process of writing and revision.
  
• Booth, Colomb, and Williams, The Craft of Research, U. of Chicago, 1995, 294pp. Aimed as a guide for the writer. Could be used as a textbook in a course on writing the term paper.

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THEMATIC CATEGORIES: THE RESEARCH PAPER

• THE ONE-PARAGRAPH ESSAY
  • Writing the one-paragraph essay (steps): Valencia Community College, Florida
  • Example: Taft College, California, "Essay Boilerplate example": Pearson Adult Learning Center, British Columbia, Canada
• TOPIC
  • CHOOSING A TOPIC Massey (NZ)
  • REFINING THE TOPIC / CHOOSING A THESIS QUESTION/STATEMENT UCLA, Kansas, UMass, Drew, UWisc, Florida Intl.
• RESEARCH
  • RESEARCHING THE TOPIC
  • EVALUTING SOURCES Recommended Evaluation Sites -- a site with links to resources on evaluating sources
    
    • EXERCISES: UCLA # 1, UCLA #2, Oregon St., Humboldt St., Bowling Green St.
  • TAKING NOTES
  • DOCUMENTING MATERIAL
  • FOOTNOTING
  • AVOIDING PLAGIARISM adultlearn.com (Thanks for the tip, Erin), Purdue, Indiana, Hamilton, Northwestern, Rio Salado, Oregon St., Loyola
    • EXERCISES: With solutions: StonyBrook , Without solutions: Illinois-Chicago , Howard Payne, Guelph, The Plagiarism Book (some cute examples and paraphrasing exercises)
      
    • EXERCISE FOR TEACHERS (catching the scofflaws): Loyola, "Ten Tips" (Las Cruces Public Schools)
      
    • "INTERNET PAPER MILLS": Coastal Carolina -- an exhaustive list
• ASSEMBLING THE PAPER
  • COMPILING A BIBLIOGRAPHY
  • STYLES: MLA, etc.
  • ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY U Wisc, Cornell, U Minnesota, Purdue Owl (e.g. Handout), St. Cloud St., Claremont
  • PRECIS
  • FUNCTIONAL OUTLINE
• STRUCTURE
  • INTRODUCTION
  • CONCLUSION
  • MIDDLE PARAGRAPHS
  • TOPIC SENTENCES
  • TRANSITIONS

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RESOURCES ARRANGED BY SOURCE (ONLINE STUFF, mostly)
GUIDE TO ONLINE SUPPLEMENTS TO PUBLISHERS' WRITING HANDBOOKS
Joel English (Old Dominion Univ.), Writing Handbook Companion Web Sites and Software -- a 22 page comparison of different sites associated with the Handbooks published by various publishers. Written June 20, 2001: some links expired, some characterizations may be dated. Even if you are not in the shopping for one of these sites, it provides a pretty useful list of which handbooks are out there.

• The New Century Handbook -- esp. Web Sources and Resources, Instructor Resources, , Writing in the disciplines
• The Little, Brown Handbook -- Student resources, Instructor resources (Class activities)
• The Scott, Foresman Handbook for Writers -- Includes model research projects (4 example papers traced through their stages of development), research guide
• Simon & Schuster Handbook for Writers
• A Writer's Reference (Hacker) -- litttle connection between book and site
• Keys for Writers -- litttle connection between book and site
• The New St. Martin's Handbook, Everyday Writer, and Easy Writer -- includes "Excercise Central", Student writing e.g.s (essays, Powerpoint, etc.), instructor resources (registration required). See also Model document gallery
• The Holt Handbook
• The Harbrace College Handbook -- near clone of Holt

GUIDE TO SUPPLEMENTAL SOFTWARE TO PUBLISHERS' WRITING HANDBOOKS

• Writing guide software for St. Martin's Guide to Writing
• Cognitive tutor for writers -- Link expired. Pity.
• Writers' workbench -- Overquantitative analysis of texts. Have any colleges or universities actually adopted it? -- Link also expired.

ONLINE WRITING CENTERS:

• The Munn Center at SLU: Online handouts: Developing an Outline, Logical fallacies, Using Writing mentors, Plagiarism, Research paper outline, Research steps and strategies
• International Writing Centers Association
  • Writing centers online -- a list of about 300 campuses with online writing centers -- See also Exemplary sites for Jo Koster's (Winthrop U.) take on which sites excel.
    • Purdue OWL: Resources for teachers, Handouts & exercises: research skills (scroll down)
    • Writing Center at U. Wisconsin Madison: "Writer's Handbook" (Handouts and more)
    • U. of Richmond Writing Center: Materials for faculty -- not a lot, but some very good ideas for some specific assignments: Peer group checklist, Annotated bibliographies, Web site analysis, Journaling. Students' ideas of best, worst assignments
    • U. of Victoria's Hypertext Writer's Guide: Table of Contents -- Want to use an online Writing Handbook? Appears to be pretty exhaustive. Other sites
    • U. of Kansas: stuff for faculty: Assignment design, Incorporating writing into syllabus, Course strategies
    • RPI online handouts -- Not terribly useful.
  • Resources for writers
  • Tutor stories
  • Electronic discussion groups
  • Electronic and print journals
  • Writing center resources
• Virginia Tech English Graduate Teaching Assistant Website: "The objective of this website is to provide practical course structures, ideas, lessons, tips, and information to help you teach Freshman Composition (1105/1106) here at Virginia Tech."
• LEO: St. Cloud St.: a link to several dozen handouts on various writing issues.
• Peterson Education: Writing the research paper

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MISCELLANEOUS
OTHER TEXTS USED IN FRESHMAN COMP COURSES (as gleaned from cursory glance at online comp syllabi)

• Hodge's Harbrace College Handbook
• Practice of Writing (Scholes)
• Reading Critically, writing well (Axelrod & Cooper)
• Literature: An introduction to reading and writing
• Writing, Reading, and Research (Veit)
• Discovering Arguments: An introduction to...
• Bair Handbook (Fulwiler and Hayakawa)
• Patterns for Composition (Kirszner and Mandell)
• Prentice Hall Handbook for Writers
• Writing with Power (Elbow)

TEACHER IDEAS PAGES:

• NCTE Teaching ideas "Practical Teaching Ideas on ESL|Journalism|Literature|Reading|Technology|Writing|Vocabulary"

"INSIDE THE TEACHER'S STUDIO" (Other teachers' ideas):

• "From the Initial Search to the Produced Web Page", Ruth Kreuzer's (StLawU) online guide for students for producing an online webpage (Covers much of the same ground as writing a research paper). Ruth has more stuff in her Blackboard account.
• Assignments for Sarah Gates' (StLawU) FYS "Growing Up Victorian": Handouts: Descriptions of written/oral assignments, Worksheets for writing papers 1-4, Worksheets for peer review of papers 1-4

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