Catalog

This resource incorporates and contextualizes material from Writing Spaces. Writing Spaces is, as Dr. Daniel likes to say, the “OG” of all things commercial-free-textbooks for first-year writing. If terms like “book series” and “peer-reviewed essays” or “by teachers for students” or “free” sound reminiscent of Who Teaches Writing, it is because Writing Spaces was and is the inspiration for Who Teaches Writing. Who Teaches Writing was no brain child of ours, but just the end result of us keeping up with good practice from smart people who have been doing this work for many years. Dr. Daniel had the good fortune to serve as web editor for Writing Spaces for a time, and he knows their work well. While we borrowed their process to create our textbook, this textbook uses existing Writing Spaces articles and organizes them around the English 1213 curriculum, along with abstracts and introductions from our editorial team (you’ll be meeting them in each section) to deliver you another commercial free textbook. Not only is it entirely possible to create free textbooks for FYC students, it has been for a while. This is because, well, Writing Spaces has been at it for a minute; as FYC Director, Dr. Daniel does not believe in unnecessary textbook costs.

This resource is designed specifically to meet the academic writing needs of international students studying at universities in the United States. The materials in the book can be covered within a 14-week semester, but each chapter or section may also be used independently.

Based on a series of needs analysis projects, this resource provides an overview of major rhetorical patterns of writing that are commonly used in university settings in the United States. These commonly required genres include descriptive and evaluative summaries, short essays, comparison and contrast assignments, literature reviews, descriptive reports, and proposals. The resource includes chapters that address the structure and purpose of these more common genres, including an awareness of the ways that the target audience and situation should shape the writing of each.

A second important focus of the textbook is teaching students how to make effective use of sources within established academic integrity standards. The third focus of the book is on key grammatical forms and constructions that are important in each of the types of writing the students will practice. By treating grammar integratively in context, we hope to address more effectively the aspects that cause difficulties in academic writing.

Building from strong open-source foundations, this modern guide to technical and professional writing explores workplace composition through both practical and theoretical lenses. Multidisciplinary backgrounds and decades of professional work experience–both in and outside of academia–have given the authors and editors of this text keen insight into the writing demands of professional, business environments. With an emphasis on understanding the basics of each writing genre–as well as the supplemental sections that may, for example, enhance a résumé or a strengthen a proposal–this text aims to provide clear, informed, considerate, and contemporary explanations for those wanting to optimally construct and efficiently compose résumés, cover letters, memorandums, instructional guides, proposals, and analytical and oral reports.

Frontier Mosaic is Oklahoma State University’s premier student-run literary magazine. We are a patchwork of the best undergraduate fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and visual art in Stillwater, Oklahoma. Frontier Mosaic released its inaugural issue spring 2015.

All Oklahoma State University undergraduate student submissions are welcome. Conventional or anarchic, we want your masterpiece. If you’re here to submit, send us your best work; blow our minds, and make the world stop and think. If you’re here to read, strap in, read well, and enjoy.  We do rolling submissions for future issues, so send in your work!