This book is a curated version of About Writing: A Guide byRobin Jeffrey. Select chapters from the original book have been rearranged tofollow the class schedule for the Fall 2023 FIQWS Killer Storiescourse at The City College of New York. Please reference the syllabus for reading due dates.
A digital version of this textbook can be found on: https://pressbooks.cuny.edu/yourenglishprofessor/
The full textbook by Jeffrey Robin can be found here: https://openoregon.pressbooks.pub/aboutwriting/

This extra credit assignment was designed for a joint humanities course in English and Black Studies, combining first-year writing and an introductory survey of African American Literature. Throughout the semester, students are encouraged to complete extra credit assignments, such as this film/tv review, to earn additional points (up to 5%).
Combining rhetorical analysis with applied research, students have a list of films or television shows to choose from, as well as the ability to select their own related media, and write a response that includes a synopsis, analysis of plot, character development and themes, and personal response to the text in light of our course topics and learning outcomes. No secondary sources were required, but this assignment can easily be updated to include additional sources.

This is a two-fold first-year college writing Research Writing assignment. In the first part, students do research into their own family/community history. In the second part, they select a particular person, moment, place, or time that they learned about during their genealogical research, and this will become the subject of their research project in the areas of sociology, geography, environmental studies, psychology, or medicine. Students choose what question they would like to explore further and the question itself stems from their family history findings.

This is a research proposal assignment, including a student worksheet, for a first-year composition classroom. This assignment is used as part of the inventive stages of the first-year research essay. It allows students an introduction to a new genre along with the opportunity to practice college-level research. The proposal acts as a tool for students to work towards developing a thesis driven essay. The worksheet helps guide students through this new genre by offering a template for content. This proposal works as a pedagogical tool allowing the instructor to offer meaningful feedback to guide the student through the critical thinking and research process.

Everyone eats. In this sense, the experience of food is common to us all. Yet the meanings we attach to food—as individuals with complex personal histories and needs, as members of particular cultures, communities, and belief systems—are remarkably diverse and powerful. In this course, we engage works by scholars, poets, and other writers to explore the significance of food as the source of inspiration and debate. This exploration will serve as a basis for our own writing. Our written responses will explore food as it relates to identity, social justice, and the environment—showing how far inquiry into one topic can stretch.

Course: ENG 110: Food as Philosophy, System, Controversy
Instructor: Nicole Cote
This project was first developed during the Open Pedagogy Fellowship (Winter 2021), through the Mina Rees Library at The Graduate Center.

Read more about this project: Cultivating Resources for the Future by Nicole Cote
https://gclibrary.commons.gc.cuny.edu/2021/04/22/cultivating-resources-for-the-future/

Foundational Practices of Online Writing Instruction, edited by Beth L. Hewett and Kevin Eric DePew, with associate editors Elif Guler and Robbin Zeff Warner, addresses the questions and decisions that administrators and instructors most need to consider when developing online writing programs and courses. Written by experts in the field (members of the Conference on College Composition and Communication Committee for Effective Practices in OWI and other experts and stakeholders), the contributors to this collection explain the foundations of the recently published (2013) A Position Statement of Principles and Examples Effective Practices for OWI and provide illustrative practical applications. To that end, in every chapter, the authors address issues of inclusive and accessible writing instruction (based upon physical and mental disability, linguistic ability, and socioeconomic challenges) in technology enhanced settings.

Please find an example of a syllabus for an online, English composition course.

The purpose of this course is to provide further practice with a variety of genres that you’ll use throughout your college career and in your professional life. These genres include reflection, analysis, reporting, arguing, and self-assessment. While you likely had experience with these genres in your primary and secondary education, this class will provide you with an opportunity to expand and develop your range. In addition to exploring these genres, we will also develop our research practices to make use of City College’s virtual library.

This is a syllabus for a Freshman Inquiry Writing Seminar (FIQWS) content section on American Musical Theatre. FIQWS is a six-credit courses taught by two instructors that combines a specific topic and an intensive writing seminar.

General Review of Elements Quiz for Write or Left: An OER Textbook for Creative Writing Courses. This quiz assesses students' knowledge of the key terms employed in the textbook and is intended for the opening weeks of the semester. Includes quiz questions and answer key.

Members of the Gordon faculty have collaborated on the authorship of this guide, and it is targeted directly at Gordon students to help them with their writing across the GSC curriculum. This guide provides at least three distinct advantages over other guides: it is specifically targeted to Gordon State students, it covers writing across the whole curriculum, not just English; and it is free.

Many approaches to crafting this guide were entertained, but the authors decided that what students really want from a composition guide are practical examples of writing that they might actually encounter in their classroom experiences at Gordon. Many guides try to do this, but this guide uses real Gordon professors and real Gordon class assignments as a starting point. This results in what we feel is a substantial improvement over other available writing guides.

GEOG 438W is a writing-intensive course that concentrates on the human-environment interactions involved in contemporary and future global warming. The course comprises two broad topical areas: global warming impacts, which takes place in the first half of the course, and global warming mitigation and policy, which encompasses the second half of the course. Each week highlights a theme, such as the impacts of climate change on human health or greenhouse gas emissions from transportation, that weaves through the course lecture, reading assignment, class discussion, and writing activity.

ENG 102, as a baseline course aligned with the Integration and Problem Solving competency and written ability, has two broad learning objectives: that students will read and analyze literary texts and that they will write academic essays.
The students in ENG 102 are usually non-majors in the first or second year of their college work and are taking the class to meet the second semester of composition that is required of most majors. Consequently, many of them enter the class with limited experience in reading and analyzing literary texts, and so the assignment is difficult for many students.
This assignment requires analysis of a literary text and conveying the results of that analysis in an essay meeting academic standards in English. The assignment requires students to do individually the kind of close reading and analysis of a text that we have done together in class as preparation. This assignment prepares them for producing the research paper that is the most substantial assignment of the course. By working on their own to identify a question about their text and attempt to reach an answer to it by gathering evidence from the text itself, students are prepared then to seek out published work on that text and its author that will supplement the work they have already done.
In earlier versions of this assignment, most students were unable to meet all performance objectives of this assignment. Students were able to identify a worthwhile question regarding their selected literary text (often with help from me), and they did show in their essays some attention to details of the text, but often they were confused about what their essays should include and what it ultimately should accomplish. I have attempted to use one essay assignment to address three dimensions (framing the question, gathering some evidence, preliminary analysis of that evidence to support a hypothesis), resulting in an assignment that was too complex for most ENG 102 students to comprehend and master. To address this problem, I have developed the two worksheets included here. The first, the Close Reading Worksheet, prompts students to notice and list elements of their selected literary text that are important for developing an interpretation of the text, and it also asks students to identify questions the text leaves unanswered without some analysis. Then the two-page Essay 2 Worksheet prompts students to identify the question that will be their essay's focus, and to gather and select the textual evidence that help them develop a potential answer. Through this means students produce what will become the content of the essay before they take on the challenge of turning that content into a coherent, organized essay.
The entire assignment takes about two weeks to complete and is worth 15% of the final grade.
LaGuardia's Core Competencies and Communication Abilities
Main Course Learning Objectives: Read and analyze literary texts Write academic essays.

Course Content and Connection to LaGuardia Competencies
The three key assignments presented here, and their two supporting class activities, are designed to address the Inquiry and Problem-Solving Core Competency and the Written Communication Ability required for English 101.The research essay (Assignment #1) is an inquiry and problem-solving assignment. It asks students to seek and use disciplinary and cross-disciplinary content knowledge to address challenging issues, weighing evidence and drawing conclusions through a process of synthesis and evaluation. Students analyzed their own experiences as immigrants, or used a primary source of their choosing, and they connected that example to the experiences of others facing migration, displacement and related emotional experiences.
Assignment #1 is also a written communication ability assignment as students are asked to construct knowledge by selecting, linking and evaluating research materials related to a specific aspect of the immigration experience. Each student chose a specific stage of the journey to focus on. They examined obstacles faced, trauma experienced, and adjustments made, and they compared and synthesized personal examples with research. Depending on the topic, the structure of the essay follows an argumentation pattern or a problem-solution pattern. And in the conclusion to the essay, students are invited to impart a message to their audience related to ethical questions the topic raises about the treatment of those arriving at our borders.
The photography essay, (Assignment #2), in a more subtle way, is an inquiry and problem-solving assignment because it asks students to close read the photograph, research its context, connect that context to the migration theme, and to consider ways a photograph communicates differently from a written text.
Similarly, the final reflective essay (Assignment #3) asks students to review our class readings and screenings and to assemble and synthesize evidence from diverse sources of knowledge relevant to our theme by explaining how their selected texts enlarged their understanding.

The thirty chapters in this edited collection were selected from the more than 500 presentations at the Writing Research Across Borders II Conference in 2011. With representatives from more than forty countries, this conference gave rise to the International Society for the Advancement of Writing Research. The chapters selected for this collection represent cutting edge research on writing from all regions, organized around three themes—cultures, places, and measures. The authors report research that considers writing in all levels of schooling, in science, in the public sphere, and in the workplace, as well as at the relationship among these various places of writing. The authors also consider the cultures of writing—among them national cultures, gender cultures, schooling cultures, scientific cultures, and cultures of the workplace. Finally, the chapters examine various ways of measuring writing and how these measures interact with practices of teaching and learning.Edited by Charles Bazerman, Chris Dean, Jessica Early, Karen Lunsford, Suzie Null, Paul Rogers, and Amanda Stansell.

What is this idea of “self?” How do we define it or more specifically how do we represent ourselves (as the writer) on page and to what extent can we make our own voice visible? Anyone can write a story, but where do you as the author exist within your own work?
For this assignment, you will be required to write a memoir (a personal narrative) or a short piece of fiction that depicts some aspect of yourself or an attribute of it, present within your own life. You can either focus on a specific moment of time, place, person, or even an object that reveals at least some perception of who you are NOT what other people perceive you to be.
Think of this as an experimental piece of writing: a self-reflection or a deeper understanding of how you perceive life or the world around you. *Remember: this course will always value the idea of comfortability – how much you are willing to express yourself on page. Don’t feel the need to restrain yourself or hold back! You are not writing for the masses or with the intention of wanting to please me or an audience. Be comfortable and confident in your skills as a writer!