Recently in Composition Category

Why Our Campuses are NOT safer without Concealed Handguns

According to their website, "Students for Concealed Carry on Campus [SCCC] is a national, non-partisan, grassroots organization composed of more than 43,000 college students, professors, college employees, parents of college students, and concerned citizens who believe that holders of state-issued concealed handgun licenses should be allowed the same measure of personal protection on college campuses that current laws afford them virtually everywhere else." In this article, the SCCC provides a point by point refutation to the arguments put forth by an anti-gun rights student organization called Students for Gun Free Schools (SGFS).

Compare/Contrast Handout and Links

University of North Carolina

This handout will help you first to determine whether a particular assignment is asking for comparison/contrast and then to generate a list of similarities and differences, decide which similarities and differences to focus on, and organize your paper so that it will be clear and effective. It will also explain how you can (and why you should) develop a thesis that goes beyond "Thing A and Thing B are similar in many ways but different in others."

Summary Practice

Sample responses and a passage to practice plus examples of weak versus strong summaries according to MTEL.

Growing Up Online

Fontline January 22, 2008

In Growing Up Online, FRONTLINE takes viewers inside the very public private worlds that kids are creating online, raising important questions about how the Internet is transforming childhood. "The Internet and the digital world was something that belonged to adults, and now it's something that really is the province of teenagers, " says C.J. Pascoe, a postdoctoral scholar with the University of California, Berkeley's Digital Youth Research project.

In addition to the PBS film, visitors to this site will find other readings and links as well as teachers' guides.

Dawn of the Digital Natives

By Steven Johnson

The Gauridian Feb. 7th 2008

According to a study for the National Endowment for the Arts, as our culture focuses more on electronic media, reading is dangerously on the decline. In this article, Steven Johnson, author of Everything Bad Is Good For You, challenges the NEA study by suggesting that on-screen literacy is not factored into the study. To Johnson, this omission is preposterous. He writes, "Odds are that you are reading these words on a computer monitor. Are you not exercising the same cognitive muscles because these words are made out of pixels and not little splotches of ink?... And of course we are writing more, and writing in public for strangers: novel readers may have declined by 10%, but the number of bloggers has gone from zero to 25 million."

The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America

July 4, 1776  (audio mp3 reading by John F. Kennedy)

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

Water-Related Conflicts Set to Escalate

ScienceDaily (Apr. 30, 2010) -- Population growth, urbanisation, increasing pollution, soil erosion and climate variations are all reflected in the management and adequacy of the world's waters. The situation is particularly difficult in many developing countries, where there are growing concerns over escalating water crises and even outright water conflicts between countries and regions.

Duty and the Beast: Animal Experimentation and Neglected Interests

D. Benatar, 2000 

From the Department of Philosophy, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa

I take it that the moral dilemma many people feel about animal experimentation is that they value its benefits yet simultaneously recognise that these benefits are at considerable cost to animals. The question then becomes: Do the benefits outweigh the costs? Glib answers to this difficult question are frequently offered from both sides of the animal experimentation dispute. For many opponents of animal experimentation, the answer is obviously negative. For many animal experimenters and their defenders, the answer is obviously affirmative.

The Benefits of Facebook "Friends:" Social Capital and College Students' Use of Online Social Network Sites

Department of Telecommunication, Information Studies, and Media
Michigan State University 2007

This study examines the relationship between use of Facebook, a popular online social network site, and the formation and maintenance of social capital. In addition to assessing bonding and bridging social capital, we explore a dimension of social capital that assesses one's ability to stay connected with members of a previously inhabited community, which we call maintained social capital.

College Students 'Addicted' to Social Media, Study Finds

By Rick Nauert, PhD, Senior News Editor, PsychCentral.com

American college students are "addicted" to the instant connections and information afforded by social media, a new study suggests.

According to researchers, students describe their feelings when they have to abstain from using media in literally the same terms associated with drug and alcohol addictions: in withdrawal, frantically craving, very anxious, extremely antsy, miserable, jittery, and crazy.

Interactive Quizzes

This website includes over 150 interactive quizzes about basic sentence parts, verbs, prepositions, phrases and clauses,punctuation, pronouns, spelling and much more! In addition, clicking on the NUMBER immediately before the quiz's name will take you to the section of the Guide pertaining to the grammatical issue(s) addressed in that quiz.

Grammar Girl's Top 10 Language Myths 

March 4 is National Grammar Day, so I have a special top-10 show to celebrate the occasion, and before you argue with me, read the whole explanation about why each of these is a myth.

Search engines like Google have made it infinitely easier to access information quickly, but how is the Internet changing our brains - our ability to read, focus and think? What might we have to give up in exchange for easy information? In this article, Nicholas Carr argues that there is more at stake than we may realize.  

"Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading?" ~ Moto Rich

The New York Times, July 27th 2008

As teenagers' scores on standardized reading tests have declined or stagnated, some argue that the hours spent prowling the Internet are the enemy of reading -- diminishing literacy, wrecking attention spans and destroying a precious common culture that exists only through the reading of books.

But others say the Internet has created a new kind of reading, one that schools and society should not discount. The Web inspires a teenager like Nadia, who might otherwise spend most of her leisure time watching television, to read and write.

Bring Clarity to Writing | ThinkSimpleNow.com

Have you ever read an email from someone that was too wordy, lacked focus, and left you confused? How can we learn from reading such emails to improve our own communication? How do we compose emails and writings that others will actually want to read?

The ability to write clearly is crucial to getting your message across no matter what you're writing, whether it's an email, a blog post, a magazine article, or a letter to a friend. Clear and concise writing is vital to having your words read and understood.

Two sites that will help with bibliographies and citations. Use with care.

• OttoBib:Make a bibliography. It's free, easy and OttoMatic.
• BibMe! The fully automatic bibliography maker that auto-fills. It's the quickest way to build a works cited page. And it's free.

Language is a Virus: Cure writer's block: inspiration - creative writing games - brainstorming toys - poetry generator - character name generator

How to Write Faster, Better, and Easier

If you are a writer, you've probably wished that you could write faster, better, and easier. I have too. I've been writing for many years now and I've found some tricks that help. They just may help you too! Everyone has their own system, but sometimes learning about another person's system can flip a switch that enables you to improve your writing.

Why We Teach Digital Writing -- Texas Tech University

Computers are not “just tools” for writing. Networked computers create a new kind of writing space that changes the writing process and the basic rhetorical dynamic between writers and readers. Computer technologies have changed the processes, products, and contexts for writing in dramatic ways—and rhetoric theory, composition practice, and writing instruction all need to change to suit how writing is produced in digital spaces.

MetaGlossary.com

Fifty (50!) Tools which can help you in Writing - lifehack.org

Fifty (50!) Tools which can help you in Writing

Update (24/07/2006): Replaced the links with archive.org.

Roy Peter Clark from Poynter Institute has posted up 50 tools that can help you when you do any kinds of writing. This is a extensive list of writing tools, but by no mean you need to apply all of them when you do any writing. There are the Writing Tool links: