“COMMONLIT is a collection of free fiction and nonfiction texts for classrooms.” Most, if not all of the material is in the public domain.
- English Language Arts Collection Resources (OER Commons)
Over fifty open resources for English Language arts. Use filters on the left side of the screen to narrow results.
- The Roughwriter’s Guide: A Handbook for Writing Well
Written for community college students, “[t]he Guide provides students with help navigating academic writing, including all aspects of the writing process, MLA and APA formatting, and grammatical and mechanical issues.”
Looking for something like They Say, I Say?
Try these open educational resources recommended by other faculty who have taught with They Say, I Say.
- Academic Phrasebook
“The Academic Phrasebank is a general resource for academic writers. It aims to provide you with examples of some of the phraseological ‘nuts and bolts’ of writing organised according to the main sections of a research paper or dissertation.”
- Entering the Conversation: A College Composition Compilation
Edited by Naomi Salmon, this text may serve as a reader for an introductory English course.
- Listening to Sources, Talking to Sources – Chapter 5 from Writing in College
This chapter overviews the approach taken by Graff and Birkenstein in They Say, I Say.
- Write Here, Right Now: An Interactive Introduction to Academic Writing and Research by Aaron Tucker and Paul Chafe
“This book utilizes PressBooks to create and host a writing e-textbook for first year university students that would effectively integrate into the flipped classroom model.”
- Writing in College: From Competence to Excellence (OpenSuny – SUNY Brockport)
“Writing in College is designed for students who have largely mastered high-school level conventions of formal academic writing and are now moving beyond the five-paragraph essay to more advanced engagement with text. It is well suited to composition courses or first-year seminars and valuable as a supplemental or recommended text in other writing-intensive classes.”
- 88 Open Essays: A Reader for Students of Composition & Rhetoric
A composition reader compiled by librarians at Northwestern Michigan College. “You can search for essays thematically that relate to topics like education, the environment, politics, health, heroes, etc.. You can also search for essays based on whether we see them as displaying composition concepts like analysis, synthesis, and research. You can search for essays that are based on shared values, essays that rely heavily on ethos, logos, or pathos, essays that are very kairos-dependent, and even essays that are scholarly.”
- Compact Anthology of World Literature
Broad-ranging anthology of world literature in six parts from ancient to contemporary times.
- English Composition: Connect, Collaborate, Communicate (University of Hawai’i)
“This OER textbook has been designed for students to learn the foundational concepts for English 100 (first-year college composition).”
- Linguistics for Teachers of English
“The primary goals of this text are to acquaint prospective teachers of English with certain aspects of the history, structure, and use of the English Language. Through considering the nature of the English language; how language and culture are interconnected as well as how it is acquired and how and why it changes, readers will come to a fuller understanding of sociolinguistics.”
- Literature, Rhetoric & Writing Books
A collection of open books of various topics and levels from the University of Minnesota Open Textbook Library.
- Literature, the Humanities, and Humanity (SUNY Fredonia)
By Theodore L. Steinberg. “After an introductory chapter that offers advice on how to read (and teach) literature, the book consists of a series of chapters that examine individual literary works ranging from The Iliad to Charles Dickens’ Bleak House. These chapters can not substitute for reading the actual works. Rather they are intended to help students read those works.”
- My Slipper Floated Away: New American Memoirs
“My Slipper Floated Away is an anthology of fresh, compelling essays written by students at Lehman College in the Bronx. The writers are immigrants or the children of immigrants and/or POC. They grew up hearing gunshots and sirens at night, played fire escape basketball and still celebrate Thanksgiving by dancing. The stories reveal the writers’ intense longing to belong in America and their passion to succeed in this country, while dealing with myriad challenges. They bear witness, in riveting, artful narratives that will be revelatory to Americans who fear and resent immigrants or people of color.”
- Naming the Unnameable: An Approach to Poetry for New Generations (Western Michigan University)
“With consideration to the psychology of invention, Bonczek Evory provides students with exercises aimed to make writing in its early stages a form of play that gives way to more enriching insights through revision, embracing the writing of poetry as both a love of language and a tool that enables us to explore ourselves and better understand the world.”
- Open-Access Books on the WAC Clearinghouse
To date, more than 85 books are available on this site and additional books are in production. All books are available for free viewing and/or download. Many are also available in low-cost print editions.
- The Open Anthology of Earlier American Literature (to 1899)
Anthology created by Robin DeRosa and her students at Plymouth State University. A great example of a collaborative and ever-evolving open educational resource.
- Open Journalism books (OER Commons)
A variety of open materials for journalism courses.
- Rhetoric and Composition (a wikibook)
The Rhetoric and Composition Wikibook is “designed for use as a textbook in first-year college composition programs, written as a practical guide for students struggling to bring their writing up to the level expected of them by their professors and instructors.”
- Rhetoric & Composition Textbook (Bay College)
Open textbook from Bay College designed for an introductory English course.
- Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing, Vol. 1
A book series containing peer-reviewed collections of essays–all composed by teachers for students–with each volume freely available for download under a Creative Commons license.
- Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing, Vol. 2
- Writing Spaces: Web Writing Style Guide Version 1.0
- Writing the Nation: A Concise Introduction to American Literature 1865 to Present
By Amy Berke (Middle Georgia State University), Robert R. Bleil (College of Coastal Georgia), and Jordan Cofer (Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College). This text “surveys key literary movements and the American authors associated with the movement. Topics include late romanticism, realism, naturalism, modernism, and modern literature.”
Repositories of Open and Zero-Cost Materials
- CORE: Open Access for the Humanities
Part of the Humanities Commons, CORE is a repository of open access monographs, articles, projects, course materials, and grey literature related to the Humanities.
- Fairy Talez
Freely accessible and large collection of fairy tales, folk tales, and fables online. Fairytalez also accepts submissions of fairy and folk tales.
- Internet Archive
“A non-profit library of millions of free books, movies, software, music, websites, and more.”
- Library of Congress – Archive of Recorded Poetry and Literature
The Archive “contains nearly two thousand recordings—of poets and prose writers participating in literary events at the Library’s Capitol Hill campus as well as sessions at the Library’s Recording Laboratory. Most of these recordings are captured on magnetic tape reels, and only accessible at the Library itself. . . . The material featured on this online presentation represents a sample of this collection. The site will continue to provide additional items from this archive on a monthly basis over the next several years.”
- LibriVox Audiobooks
A volunteer-run digital library of audio recordings of books in the public domain.
“Lit2Go is a free online collection of stories and poems in Mp3 (audiobook) format. An abstract, citation, playing time, and word count are given for each of the passages.” Some passages include supplemental reading strategies.
- Open Folklore
“A partnership of the American Folklore Society and the Indiana University Libraries, Open Folklore is a scholarly resource devoted to increasing the number and variety of open access resources, published and unpublished, that are available for the field of folklore studies and the communities with whom folklore scholars partner.”
- Perseus Digital Library
- Project Gutenberg
Collection of over 57,000 public domain ebooks that can be downloaded for free or read online.
Open English Courses & Resources
- African American Literature (Lehman College)
“African American Literature is a survey course that will take us from the early days of enslavement to the present. We will read, analyze, and discuss literary texts written by African Americans, paying particular attention to the political, historical and social context that informs these texts.”
- English Courses from Open Yale
Open course include Introduction to Theory of Literature, Milton, Modern Poetry, and The American Novel since 1945.
- Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner (Open Yale)
“This course examines major works by Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Faulkner, exploring their interconnections on three analytic scales: the macro history of the United States and the world; the formal and stylistic innovations of modernism; and the small details of sensory input and psychic life.”
- Introduction to Literature Course (Lumen Learning)
Open course from Lumen Learning. Be sure to click the words “Licenses and Attributions” at the bottom of each page for copyright and licensing information specific to the material on that page.
- Journalism + Design (New School)
A toolkit for journalism educators.
- Mythology Course Readings (Northwestern Michigan College)
By Sarah Wangler and Joelle Hannert and Northwestern Michigan College
- Writability Podcast (College of the Sequoias)
“The Writability podcast is an openly licensed series of conversations with our faculty and staff: podcast episode topics range from tips for successful online students to the 5-paragraph essay to remote Library services. Most episodes are English and/or writing-focused but include a lot of cross-discipline conversations as well.”
- Write a Manifesto [Composition] Assignment designed by Caron Knauer of La Guardia Community College.
- Writing for the Humanities Syllabus (City College)
By Julia Brown of City College