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Textbooks, references and open learning resources.
![Reading and Writing Successfully in College: A Guide for Students [Revised Edition]](/api/files/covers/otl-1419.webp)
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Reading and Writing Successfully in College: A Guide for Students [Revised Edition]
Patricia Lynne · ROTEL · 2023
This textbook provides students with guidelines for understanding writing tasks as intellectual work using Bloom’s Taxonomy and for treating the writing process as a set of variable activities that move along a trajectory from idea or assignment to a finished product. The book also includes chapters on strengthening reading strategies and on finding, evaluating, and using sources effectively.
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English Composition- Connect, Collaborate, Communicate
Ann Inoshita, Karyl Garland, Kate Sims, Jeanne K. Tsutsui Keuma, & Tasha Williams · University of Hawaiʻi
In the contents: 1: College Success Skills · 01.2: College Success Skills
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Writing, Reading, and College Success: A First-Year Composition Course for All Learners
Athena Kashyap & Erika Dyquisto · City College of San Francisco
In the contents: 01: Writing and College Success · 1.02: Becoming a Successful College Student
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English 96: Readings, Presentations, and Assignments
Paul Butera · City Colleges of Chicago
English 96 is an integrated reading and writing course designed to increase students’ critical thinking, reading, and writing abilities and to promote their academic literacy for long-term success. This course provides a structured, rigorous learning environment that nurtures student engagement through a shared, sustained classroom experience, and it fosters collaboration in a curriculum that respects students’ individuality and humanity and that prepares them to meet college-level expectations.
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College Success and Advanced ESL Writing
Talley Caruso · Chabot College
This textbook enables college success with a particular focus on ESL (English as a Second Language) students developing academic reading and writing skills. Designed to be both instructional and accessible, this resource blends foundational writing instruction with targeted support for multilingual learners, empowering students to grow as confident, critical readers and effective academic writers.
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Reading and Writing Successfully in College
Patricia Lynne · Framingham State University
In the contents: 02: Successful College Reading
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About Writing - A Guide
Robing Jeffrey · Klamath Community College
This writer’s reference condenses and covers everything a beginning writing student needs to successfully compose college-level work, including the basics of composition, grammar, and research. It is broken down into easy-to-tackle sections, while not overloading students with more information than they need. Great for any beginning writing students or as reference for advanced students!
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EmpoWord - A Student-Centered Anthology and Handbook for College Writers
Shane Abrams · Ashland High School
In the contents: 1.1.04: Model Texts by Student Authors · 1.2.04: Model Texts by Student Authors · 1.3.04: Model Texts by Student Authors
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Sourcing, summarizing, and synthesizing: Skills for effective research writing
Wendy McBride · University of Arkansas · 2023
An open educational text written by McBride.
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Writing for Inquiry and Research
Jeffrey Kessler; Mark Bennett; Sarah Primeau; Charitianne Williams · University of Illinois Library - Urbana · 2023
Writing for Inquiry and Research guides students through the composition process of writing a research paper. The book divides this process into four chapters that each focus on a genre connected to research writing: the annotated bibliography, proposal, literature review, and research essay. Each chapter provides significant guidance with reading, writing, and research strategies, along with significant examples and links to external resources. This book serves to help students and instructors with a writing-project-based approach, transforming the research process into an accessible series of smaller, more attainable steps for a semester-long course in research writing. Additional resources throughout the book, as well as in three appendices, allow for students and instructors to explore the many facets of the writing process together.
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Making Meaning With & Through Writing: An Approach to Research Writing
Ilknur Sancak-Marusa · The Pennsylvania Alliance for Design of Open Textbooks (PA-ADOPT) · 2025
Academic writing is an act of intellectual translation which converts raw ideas into academic discourse to bridge the gap between writer and reader. However, writing is often viewed as a mechanical skill rather than an intellectual craft. This brief text reframes academic writing as a translation process that transforms complex thoughts, research findings, and abstract concepts into purposeful, persuasive writing. Using the writing process as the foundation, each chapter aims to provide a practice to navigate the recursive nature of writing. To that end, fundamental translation principles are utilized to analyze audience needs, understand scholarly articles, synthesize and craft arguments that resonate across disciplinary boundaries. Writing isn’t separate from thinking as it allows us to refine our ideas and share them with others in meaningful ways. Embracing this connection between writing and its impact, positions an individual as an active participant rather than a passive observer in conversations that shape disciplines and the world-at-large. This writing guide seeks to equip students with the essential tools needed to engage meaningfully in the communities they serve and soon will discover.
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Writing and Literature: Composition as Inquiry, Learning, Thinking, and Communication
Tanya Bennet · University of North Georgia Press · 2017
In the age of Buzzfeeds, hashtags, and Tweets, students are increasingly favoring conversational writing and regarding academic writing as less pertinent in their personal lives, education, and future careers. Writing and Literature: Composition as Inquiry, Learning, Thinking and Communication connects students with works and exercises and promotes student learning that is kairotic and constructive. Dr. Tanya Long Bennett, professor of English at the University of North Georgia, poses questions that encourage active rather than passive learning. Furthering ideas presented in Contribute a Verse: A Guide to First-Year Composition as a complimentary companion, Writing and Literature builds a new conversation covering various genres of literature and writing. Students learn the various writing styles appropriate for analyzing, addressing, and critiquing these genres including poetry, novels, dramas, and research writing. The text and its pairing of helpful visual aids throughout emphasizes the importance of critical reading and analysis in producing a successful composition. Writing and Literature is a refreshing textbook that links learning, literature, and life.
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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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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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Writing Rhetorically: Framing First Year Writing
Kirk Fontenot; Shelley Rodrigue; Wanda Waller · LOUIS: The Louisiana Library Network
This course equips students with a strong understanding of how to use rhetorical modes that underpin much academic writing. The textbook covers modes related to creative writing, such as narration and illustration, while also covering analytically-focused modes such as comparison and cause and effect. Detailed assignment sheets are supplemented by helpful student worksheets for each major paper assignment. The book's final chapter includes grammar and style exercises. This textbook has been heavily adapted from material taken from English Composition I: Rhetorical Methods-Based, an OER developed and authored by Lumen Learning. Each chapter’s author has edited and created new content using Lumen Learning’s text as its primary source material, except where otherwise indicated. Where applicable, other source materials have been noted at the chapter level. This textbook was created as part of the Interactive OER for Dual Enrollment project, facilitated by LOUIS: The Louisiana Library Network and funded by a $2 million Open Textbooks Pilot Program grant from the Department of Education. This project supports the extension of access to high-quality post-secondary opportunities to high school students across Louisiana and beyond. This project features a collaboration between educational systems in Louisiana, the library community, Pressbooks technology partner, and workforce representatives. It will enable and enhance the delivery of open educational resources (OER) and interactive quiz and assessment elements for priority dual enrollment courses in Louisiana and nationally. Developed OER course materials will be released under a license that permits their free use, reuse, modification and sharing with others.The target audience for this project and this textbook are dual enrollment students. Dual enrollment is the opportunity for a student to be enrolled in high school and college at the same time. A dual enrollment student receives credit on both their high school and co
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Rhetoric Matters: A Guide to Success in the First Year Writing Class
Adam Falik; Dorie La Rue; Tracey Watts · LOUIS: The Louisiana Library Network · 2022
Rhetoric Matters: A Guide to Success in the First Year Writing Class offers students necessary concepts and practice to learn all the elements needed for successful first year writing and set the stage for future writing success in college. This textbook was created as part of the Interactive OER for Dual Enrollment project, facilitated by LOUIS: The Louisiana Library Network and funded by a $2 million Open Textbooks Pilot Program grant from the Department of Education. This project supports the extension of access to high-quality post-secondary opportunities to high school students across Louisiana and beyond. This project features a collaboration between educational systems in Louisiana, the library community, Pressbooks technology partner, and workforce representatives. It will enable and enhance the delivery of open educational resources (OER) and interactive quiz and assessment elements for priority dual enrollment courses in Louisiana and nationally. Developed OER course materials will be released under a license that permits their free use, reuse, modification and sharing with others.The target audience for this project and this textbook are dual enrollment students. Dual enrollment is the opportunity for a student to be enrolled in high school and college at the same time. A dual enrollment student receives credit on both their high school and college transcripts for the same course.
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The Commons: Tools for Reading, Writing, and Rhetoric
Jill Parrot; Dominic Ashby; Jonathon Collins · Eastern Kentucky University Libraries · 2022
An Open Textbook for English 101: Reading, Writing, and Rhetoric at Eastern Kentucky University
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Writing as Inquiry: A Guide to WR 121 at the University of Oregon
Kara Clevinger; Stephen Rust · University of Oregon Libraries · 2022
Welcome to our creative commons OER (open educational resource) for Writing 121 at the University of Oregon. This resource is designed for students to be a zero-cost, high-quality guide to academic writing, with the goal of preparing you for success in college and beyond.
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Intermediate College Writing: Building and Practicing Mindful Writing Skills
Dawn Atkinson; Stacey Corbitt · Montana Technological University · 2026
Welcome to Intermediate College Writing: Building and Practicing Mindful Writing Skills, an open textbook designed for use in university-level courses that focus on cultivating study skills alongside effective academic and workplace writing skills. It offers a no-cost alternative to commercial products, combining practical guidance with interactive exercises and thoughtfully designed writing opportunities. This textbook’s modular design and ample coverage of topics and genres means that it can be used flexibly over semester-long or stretch courses, allowing instructors and students to select the chapters that are most relevant for their needs. By blending new material with reviews of key topics, such as academic integrity, the chapters provide fresh perspectives on matters vital to the development of strong writing skills. The book adapts, builds upon, and expands material covered in our other two open textbooks, Mindful Technical Writing: An Introduction to the Fundamentals (Atkinson & Corbitt, 2021)1 and Advanced-Level Writing in the University Classroom and Beyond: Mindful Practices for Technical, Business, and Scientific Communication (Atkinson & Corbitt, 2024). If you would like to access a Word Document version of this text please email Author, Stacey Corbitt, scorbitt@mtech.edu.
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Write or Left
Sybil Priebe · Sybil Priebe · 2016
In this book, we'll go over some of the general principles of writing practices as well as advice and tips on how to write creatively, but mainly, you’ll be introduced to as many genres and categories as possible. We won’t get bogged down in doing the writing process “perfectly” or creating “perfect literature.” The goal is to learn about as many genres as possible, practice writing in those genres, and get feedback.