Books for Teachers Who Assign Writing

The following books offer guidance to instructors who assign writing in their courses. Many of these books are available on the Clearinghouse, while others are provided by other open-access publishers. To add a book to this list, please contact Mike Palmquist at Mike.Palmquist@ColoState.edu.

Books Available on the Clearinghouse

Designing Writing Assignments

By Traci Gardner

In this book, Traci Gardner offers practical ways for teachers to develop assignments that will allow students to express their creativity and grow as writers and thinkers while still addressing the many demands of resource-stretched classrooms. This book includes dozens of starting points that teachers can customize and further develop for the students in their own classrooms.... More

Teaching Writing Across the Curriculum 4/e

By Art Young

Teaching Writing Across the Curriculum, presented here in its fourth edition, provides a comprehensive, accessible discussion of teaching writing across the curriculum. Written by one of the leaders in the field of writing across the curriculum (WAC), it offers a brief introduction to WAC and then discusses how writing can be used to help students learn and communicate.... More

Grammar Alive! A Guide for Teachers

By Brock Haussamen with Amy Benjamin, Martha Kolln, Rebecca S. Wheeler, and members of NCTE's Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar

This volume provides a valuable resource for “college teachers who wonder what to do about grammar—how to teach it, how to apply it, how to learn what they themselves were never taught." Grammar Alive! offers teachers ways to negotiate the often conflicting goals of testing, confident writing, the culturally inclusive classroom, and the teaching of Standard English while also honoring other varieties of English .... More

Roots in the Sawdust: Writing to Learn Across the Disciplines

By Anne Ruggles Gere

In this collection, editor Anne Ruggles Gere offers a response to Arthur N. Applebee's call for "more situations in which writing can serve as a tool for learning rather than as a means to display acquired knowledge" (1982).... More

Teaching One-to-One: The Writing Conference

By Muriel Harris

This groundbreaking book offers advice for teachers new to conferencing, experienced teachers seeking to refine or expand their approaches to conferencing, and tutors working in writing centers. Since it was published in 1986, it has become one of the most widely cited books on conferencing. Harris offers a theoretical framework for conference teaching, descriptions of activities typical of and central to writing conferences, advice on diagnostic strategies for individualized instruction, and instructional strategies.... More

Books Available from Other Publishers

Bad Ideas About Writing

Edited by Cheryl E. Ball & Drew M. Loewe

This edited collection counters major myths about writing instruction. Inspired by the provocative science- and social-science-focused book This Idea Must Die and written for a general audience, the collection offers opinionated, research-based statements intended to spark debate and to offer a better way of teaching writing. Contributors, as scholars of rhetoric and composition, provide a snapshot of and antidotes to major myths in writing instruction. This collection is published in whole by the Digital Publishing Institute at West Virginia University Libraries and in part by Inside Higher Ed. View this edited collection ....

How We Teach Writing Tutors

Edited by Karen Gabrielle Johnson and Ted Roggenbuck (Editors) and Crystal Conzo (Digital Editor)

How We Teach Writing Tutors is a collection of eighteen chapters from writing center scholars who seek to extend the writing center community’s knowledge and enrich its understanding of writing center work by sharing effective pedagogy and research through digital affordances. View this edited collection ....

Web Writing: Why and How for Liberal Arts Teaching and Learning

Edited by Jack Dougherty and Tennyson O'Donnell

The essays in Web Writing respond to contemporary debates over the proper role of the Internet in higher education, steering a middle course between polarized attitudes that often dominate the conversation. The authors argue for the wise integration of web tools into what the liberal arts does best: writing across the curriculum. View this edited collection ....