About This Course

Introduction to College Composition was developed by Lumen Learning in collaboration with Cerritos College (Norwalk, CA). It is designed as a resource for the precollege English composition classroom. It aligns with ENG 020 and is the first of a three-course “Path to College Composition” series. All courses in this series focus on the same primary content areas:

  • Critical Reading
  • Writing Process
  • Research Process
  • Grammar and Mechanics

In Introduction to College Composition, most of the learning outcomes in each of these four areas are written to the analyze level of Bloom’s Taxonomy (e.g., “Analyze topic selection activities,” “Analyze summary skills for reading comprehension”).

An optional fifth content area is also included:

  • College Success Skills

The college-success–skills content is focused specifically on success in a writing classroom. It contains outcomes across several levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy.

Module Design

As you read through the following pages, you’ll notice common elements.  Each module includes an introduction and conclusion that provide explanatory context for students. The pages in between contain the following:

  • Learning outcomes
  • Topic-level introductions
  • Readings, videos, and slideshows aligned to learning outcomes
  • “Self-check” quizzes that provide formative (non-graded) feedback
  • Licenses and attributions for all content

Each module also includes written assignments and/or discussion assignments.

Use It Your Way

As an OER-based course, this content is all adaptable to suit your needs in your course. Don’t need Success Skills content in your semester? Lose that module. Prefer to teach reading and writing as an integrated strategy? Combine those two modules in the way that best fits your students’ needs.

This is intended to be a broad offering of resources, and so it will probably contain more than you actually need. Feel free to trim down to exactly what you want. Revise the language to convey exactly what you want to convey.

Faculty Resources

The publicly accessible content in the book contains a series of customizable, scaffolded assignments that build up to four final projects. Verified instructors can also access the more than 400 quiz questions aligned to course content.

You can use as many or as few of these resources as you’d like. Again, since it’s all OER, they can be adapted to fit projects and primary reading materials you already enjoy teaching and find effective in your classroom. Use them as exact guides, loose templates, or airy inspiration.

Additional Composition Goodies

Primary Resources

Traditionally, composition classes require (at least) three types of resources for students:

  1. a textbook that addresses strategies and processes for writing
  2. a style guide that addresses formal rules and citation guidelines, often used as a reference text
  3. a reader that gives students primary material for in-class discussion and writing assignments

This text addresses the first two components. You’re welcome to use it with whatever primary reading material you’d like. If you’d like a reader that’s also fully Open, here are two options that pair nicely with this text:

Other Composition Textbooks

Path to College Composition Series

If you need some content aligned to higher (or lower) Bloom’s levels, consider mixing and matching content from the other Path to College Composition courses:

Lumen-Curated Composition Collections

Content from other Lumen composition/reading texts can also be incorporated into your customized course, as desired: