Teaching resources and links

Assessment handouts
Student Reading and Writing Rubric. This handout outlines how student writing is assessed in my classes. I use the following categories: Content/Argument, Ideas, Organization, Diction and mechanics, Research and documentation, as well as a Reading and writing skills hierarchy.

Participation, Collegiality, and Conduct Rubric. This handout outlines how student participation grade is assessed. I use the following categories: Answering questions in class, Response to instructor feedback, Response to student feedback, Quality of group work, In-class contribution, Feedback for instructor, and Feedback of student work.

Oral Presentation Rubric. This handout gives guidelines on how I assess a student's presentation in class.

Recitation Rubric. This handout, adapted from the scoresheet from the Poetry Out Loud recitation program, is used in Oral Interpretation of Literature classes by instructor and student alike. Includes breakdown of scores.

Paper writing resources
A sample paper template. I just made this in Summer 2006, and am curious to see if it is useful for students. It's is a Microsoft Word document that is already formatted to the exact specifications for Modern Language Association (MLA) style. There's one-inch margins, double-spacing, Times Roman 12-point font, as well as a running head placed in there for students to change for their last name accordingly, predefined styles for long, indented quotes, and Works Cited Page. You can also buy what are called Wizards for Word, which are add-on programs that will pre-format your documents according to various styles.

How to Create a “Running Header” in Microsoft Word: A Tutorial. I made this a couple years ago. Should you choose to not use my template for writing papers, you will still need to have what is a running head in your Word documents. In MLA style, it would be your last name and the page number on the upper-right hand side.I have found that many of my students do not know how to do this and, worse, perform the maddening task or writing page numbers into the document themselves. This is a step-by-step guide on how to do it the right way in Word.

Prentice Hall's proofreader marks guide. We will be marking up each other's papers, but how will we learn to read each other's chickenscratch and doodles? Good question. Here is a one-page cheat sheet on how professional editors and writers mark manuscripts. These are marks are universally accepted across disciplines and industries, so it's a very useful skill to learn these. Print it out and keep it at your side.

Useful external links for writing papers
Dictionary.com. I still think students should have a physical book for thier college dictionary, but I use this too; so here's the link.

Among the many recources on the 21st Century Information Fluency Project site, there is a Citation Wizard that formats your sources to Works Cited-friendly formats according to either MLA and APA styles after entering in your source's information. Another site that does this is CitationMachine.net. Students still should check the results to make sure they are correct--that's because I will check as will other professors--but I have found this helps students figure out how to contruct Works Cited pages rather well.

Purdue University's Online Writing Lab. This is actually a constellation of sites with a wealth of resources for the student writer. It's been invaluable in my teaching, especially college composition. We will be using versions of many of the handouts from here.

The College of Saint Rose Academic Support Center. An invaluable resource for students who need help with study skills, individual help with their papers, or help for students with documented disabilities.

This Guide to Grammar and Style by Jack Lynch, an Associate Professor of English at Rutgers-Newark, is entertaining and informative, and demonstrates that writing is not about checking off what is right and wrong; rather, writing is about being aware of how one is writing and in which context. His page on Getting an A on an English Paper is pretty good, too.

English Usage, Style, & Composition. Bartleby.com posts up works that are in public domain. This link includes one of the first editions of Strunk and White's Elements of Style, American Heritage, Fowler's King's English, and others.

The University of Chicago Writing Program's Grammar Resources on the Web points to other writing and grammar sites.

Sylva Rhetoricae: The Forest of Rhetoric (Gideon Burton, Brigham Young) -- A superb guide to classical rhetoric, with definitions of many rhetorical terms.

Guardian Style Guide.A guide to what is called the "house style" of the British newspaper The Guardian. I link to it here because it's an example of how one particular publication establishes its style, and requires its writers to adhere to it. You find this to be the case at many other workplaces.

Commonly confused words from AskOxford.com.

A List of Fallacious Arguments. A defective or flawed argument is called a fallacy, and as you can imagine, there's tons of varities. Many of the names date back centuries and have roots in the fields of logic, philosophy and law.It makes sense, then, that many fallacies have Latin names, such as ad hominem, which means "to the person." Essential reading. Other lists appear here, here, and here.

Useful links for creative writing
The Gale Group's Glossary of [Literary] Terms. If you're going to study literature on a serious level, it's best to have a book of literary terms. I'm partial to Lewis Turco's books, but there many others.

The Academy of American Poets.

The Poetry Society of America.

Paul Brian's Common Errors in English page is very useful, as is the Non-Errors page.