Digital library
Textbooks, references and open learning resources.

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A Short Handbook for Writing Essays in the Humanities and Social Sciences
Allosso & Allosso · LibreTexts
A retired master teacher of English and Comparative Literature teams up with his son, a History professor, on a new version of the writing manual he wrote and used for decades at the University of California, Davis.

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Research in Color: A hands-on roadmap to literature reviews in the social sciences
Frances Brady · National Louis University
This workbook guides graduate students through the literature review process for a research course, dissertation, thesis, or publication. Through pragmatic and creative activities, students will find and evaluate sources, take effective notes, recognize patterns, and synthesize findings to prepare them for writing their literature reviews.

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A Short Handbook for writing essays in the Humanities and Social Sciences
Dan Allosso; Salvatore Allosso · Minnesota Libraries Publishing Project · 2019
A retired master teacher of English and Comparative Literature teams up with his son, a History professor, on a new version of the writing manual he wrote and used for decades at the University of California, Davis.

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Conventions 101: A Functional Approach to Teaching (and Assessing!) Grammar and Punctuation
Chauna Ramsey · Columbia Gorge Community College
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.

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Beyond Dichotomy - Synergizing Writing Center and Classroom Pedagogies
Steven J. Corbett · George Mason University
How closely can or should writing centers and writing classrooms collaborate? Beyond Dichotomy explores how research on peer tutoring one-to-one and in small groups can inform our work with students in writing centers and other tutoring programs, as well as in writing courses and classrooms. These multi-method (including rhetorical and discourse analyses and ethnographic and case-study) investigations center on several course-based tutoring (CBT) partnerships at two universities.

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A Theory of Literate Action - Literate Action II
Charles Bazerman · University of California, Santa Barbara
In the contents: 1.02: Symbolic Selves in Society - Vygotsky on Language and Formation of the Social Mind · 1.03: Active Social Symbolic Selves - Vygotskian Traditions · 1.04: Active Social Symbolic Selves - The Phenomenological Sociology Tradition

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PRJ 2000: Newswriting for Public Relations
Joel Whitaker · Prince George's Community College
In the contents: 7.04: Social Media · 10: Social Media · 10.01: Social Media

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Persuasion, Critical Thinking, and Writing
Paula Cardwell · ASCCC Open Educational Resources Initiative
In the contents: 09: Antisocial Persuasion · 9.02: Antisocial Persuasion · 9.03: Types of Antisocial Persuasion

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Critical Expressivism - Theory and Practice in the Composition Classroom
Roeder & Gatto · LibreTexts
In the contents: 03: Personal Writing and Social Change · 3.02: Communication as Social Action- Critical Expressivist Pedagogies in the Writing Classroom · 3.03: From the Personal to the Social

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Foundational Practices of Online Writing Instruction
Beth L. Hewett and Kevin Eric DePew, Editors · WAC Clearinghouse
Foundational Practices of Online Writing Instruction addresses the questions and decisions that administrators and instructors most need to consider when developing online writing programs and courses.

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Grammar Essentials
Excelsior Online Writing Lab · Excelsior College
We speak of this as usage. There are far more usage rules than grammar rules, and they are far more difficult to master. Many of them you just have to learn; and, after you learn them, you have to use them over and over and over in order to incorporate them into your language.

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Writing as Material Practice - Substance, Surface and Medium
Kathryn Piquette et al. · University College London
In the contents: 06: The Function and Meaning of Writing in the Prehistoric Aegean - Some Reflections on the Social and Symbolic Significance of Writing from a Material Perspective (Helene Whittaker) · 6.09: Social and Symbolic Implications · 8.04: Linear A - The social and cultural construction of Neopalatial literacy

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Afrofuturism Across the African Diaspora: Empowering Black Students Through Literature
Patricia France and Hajra Ismail Yacooboli · College of Marin
Afrofuturism is important because it offers a chance to continue to dream. Representation matters in many different forms. In academia there are canons of literature that center whiteness, but we need to engage students in new ways that connect to their world now. As instructors who are looking for topics to engage our many diverse students, there is beauty in using Afrofuturism in a college literature course.

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Introduction to College Research
Walter Butler; Aloha Sargent; Kelsey Smith · Academic Senate for California Community Colleges · 2021
This book acknowledges our changing information landscape, covering key concepts in information literacy to support a research process with intention. We start by critically examining the online environment many of us already engage with every day, looking at algorithms, the attention economy, information disorder and cynicism, information hygiene, and fact-checking. We then move into an exploration of information source types, meaningful research topics, keyword choices, effective search strategies, library resources, Web search considerations, the ethical use of information, and citation.

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Supporting English Language Learners in First-Year College Composition
Breana Bayraktar; Elaine George; Nataliya Schetchikova · Virginia's Academic Library Consortium (VIVA) · 2023
Supporting ELLs in FYC is organized around five key essays, selected to coordinate with the essay styles commonly taught in first-year/first-semester composition courses. This organization is planned to offer instructors the flexibility to best support the pacing of the composition course. There are 2 expository, 1 narrative, and 2 argument essays. Each module includes one essay, with accompanying activities and supporting materials. Expository: Sweet, Sour & Resentful Expository: Why Rituals Are Good Narrative: Prison to Professor Argument: Fake News Argument: Misinformation

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Arguments in Context
Thaddeus Robinson · Muhlenberg College · 2021
Arguments in Context is a comprehensive introduction to critical thinking that covers all the basics in student-friendly language. Intended for use in a semester-long course, the text features classroom-tested examples and exercises that have been chosen to emphasize the relevance and applicability of the subject to everyday life. Three themes are developed as the text proceeds from argument identification and analysis, to the standards and techniques of evaluation: (i) the importance of asking the right questions, (ii) the influence of biases, cognitive illusions, and other psychological factors, and (iii) the ways that social situations and structures can enhance and impoverish our thinking. On this last point, the text includes sustained discussion of disagreement, cooperative dialogue, testimony, trust, and social media. Overall, the text aims to equip readers with a set of tools for working through important decisions and disagreements, and to help them become more careful and active thinkers.

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Howdy or Hello?: Technical and Professional Communications
Matt McKinney; Kalani Pattison; Sarah LeMire; Kathy Anders · Texas A&M University · 2021
Technical writing courses introduce you to some of the most important aspects of writing in the worlds of science, technology, and business—in other words, the kind of writing that scientists, nurses, doctors, computer specialists, government officials, engineers, and other professionals do as a part of their regular work. The skills learned in technical writing courses can be useful in other fields as well, including education and social sciences.

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Arguing Using Critical Thinking
Jim Marteney · Academic Senate for California Community Colleges · 2020
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. Critical thinking is a series learned skills. In each chapter of this book you will find a variety of skills that will help you improve your thinking and argumentative ability. As you improve, you will grow into a more confident person being more in charge of your world and the decisions you make.

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The Western World: Daily Readings on Geography
Joel Quam; Scott Campbell · College of DuPage · 2020
In essay format, this textbook considers examples of various sub-categories of Geography in combination with five regions of the Western World.

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A Theory of Literate Action: Literate Action
Charles Bazerman · WAC Clearinghouse · 2013
The second in a two-volume set, A Theory of Literate Action draws on work from the social sciences—and in particular sociocultural psychology, phenomenological sociology, and the pragmatic tradition of social science—to "reconceive rhetoric fundamentally around the problems of written communication rather than around rhetoric's founding concerns of high stakes, agonistic, oral public persuasion" (p. 3). An expression of more than a quarter-century of reflection and scholarly inquiry, this volume represents a significant contribution to contemporary rhetorical theory.