Common
errors in English - Oh yeah, you've got your pet peeves. Likely,
you will find one or more of them here when it comes to writing.
For example, I hyphenate Asian-American. Should I? Here's what
this site says: "Although it is traditional to hyphenate
“African-American,” “Irish-American,” “Cuban-American,”
etc., there is a recent trend toward omitting the hyphen, possibly
in reaction to the belittling phrase “hyphenated Americans.”
However, some styles still call for the hyphen when the phrase
is used adjectivally, so that you might be an African American
who enjoys African-American writers. Omitting the hyphen may puzzle
some readers, but it’s not likely to offend anyone."
Citation Wizard
- I don't know if it is any faster than just looking it up, but
this nice little tool will create your reference citation for
you once you have typed in the key info. Works for several formats
including APA.
Commonly
misspelled words - A list of the "100 most often misspelled
words in English" -- yes, I spelled misspelled correctly!
"The
Nuts and Bolts of College Writing" - very extensive and
well organized set of resources for students to help with most
aspects of their writing, from Michael Harvey at Washington College
- lots of good modeling and lots of good quotes - including the
quote in the section on wordiness from Mark Twain: "Substitute
damn every time you're inclined to write very; your
editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should
be."
Writing
Guides - a well-organized, extensive set of links to quality
writing resources and some original documents covering everything
from primary vs. secondary sources, documentation and citation,
theses and dissertations to grammar and usage, writing for ESL
learners, and writing good essays - from the Univ. of Kansas -
also includes a few resources
for instructors
Plagiarism
self-test - This is a good, detailed exercise/self-test on
plagiarism. Here
is a list of other online plagiarism exercises provided by this
site.
Plagiarism
detection services - a side-by-side comparison chart of several
of the most popular sites where faculty can send papers to check
to see if they have been plagiarized, from a recent presentation
by Liz Johnson
Paraphrasing
assignment - This is a very well designed exercise for students
in which they are provided with original passages and two sample
paraphrasings of each passage. Students are asked to rate the
acceptability of each paraphrase and explain their ratings.
Avoiding
Plagiarism - another good guide entitled "Avoiding Plagiarism,
Self-plagiarism, and Other Questionable Writing Practices: A Guide
to Ethical Writing" by Michael Roig
Plagiarism
- lots of good resources for students and faculty
Plagiarism
- excellent resource clearly delineates what is and isn't plagiarism
for students - good site to link to from your syllabus
Plagiarism
- another excellent resource - clearly explains plagiarism, provides
guidelines to avoid it, and provides good side-by-side examples
of passages and references correctly versus incorrectly cited
"How
to Give a Bad Talk" - a tongue-in-cheek list of advice
for giving a bad presentation to illustrate some things to avoid
Tutorials
on information literacy skills - Here is an excellent set
of six tutorials teaching skills on finding and evaluating information,
understanding how information is produced and other topics. For
example, under Basics, there is a helpful, interactive lesson
on primary vs. secondary sources.
Library
Tutorials and Guides - here is some more good reference information
for students including tutorials on finding information efficiently,
critically analyzing information sources and how to prepare an
annotated bibliography
Web
Research Activities - a series of practical exercises to help
teach anyone how to search the web, evaluate the quality of sites,
cite the web and more - from McGraw-Hill/Dushkin
Human
Participants Tutorial - a tutorial from NIH to help researchers
"understand how to protect the rights and welfare of all human
participants involved in research." A good place to start for
students who will be designing or conducting research. Takes about
30-45 minutes to complete. Requires users to complete a registration
form first. A "completion certificate" is available when the tutorial
is finished.
Quizlet
- a place to create and share flash cards and quizzes online
College
Prep 101 - useful set of tutorials for those planning to go
to college and those already there
Learning
Skills Handouts and Tutorials - many of these good study skills
resources include exercises so students can practice the skills
- for example, one tutorial addresses concept mapping - students
can choose to or be assigned to create a graphical representation
(concept map) of their notes or readings - it is a very effective
method for finding relationships between concepts and increasing
retention - this tutorial gives students some notes to transform
into a concept map and then includes a sample of what such a map
could look like
- from the Univ. of Victoria, Canada
