For Instructors

Below you will find materials—handouts, writing exercises, in-class activities, assignment prompts, and more—for teaching courses in literature and/or Reading and Composition, many of them developed or adapted by Graduate Student Instructors in the Departments of English and Comparative Literature at UC Berkeley. We aim to diversify these offerings to encompass resources for teaching writing in a wider range of humanities disciplines. In the meantime, we believe that many of these materials will prove useful to writing instructors in humanities disciplines of all stripes.

We have tried our best to make contact with all authors in order to request permission to include their materials on this website. If you find any of your own documents but prefer NOT to have them made available here, please accept our apologies—we will take them down as soon as you contact us with your request. If you would like to contribute a revised version of your document, please send it to us and we will upload it right away. And if you are pleased to see the fruits of your labors here, with or without your explicit permission, please accept our heartfelt thanks!

These resources may only be used for educational purposes and not for profit. If you use any of these materials in your teaching, whether verbatim or in modified form, please cite your source fully, identifying both the author (if named on the document) and this website.

Teaching Drafting | Revising | Editing
Anatomy of an Essay: Handouts and Exercises
Reading and Writing Titles (J.P. Huhr)
The Art of the Essay Title (Karen Williams)
Writing an Introduction (Stephanie Moore)
Three Bad Introductory Paragraphs
Evaluating Introductions (Stephanie Bahr)
Formula for an Analytical Essay (Jhoanna Infante)
Structuring Textual Analysis (Stephanie Bahr)
Organization, Conceptual Development, and Transition Sentences (Brendan Prawdzik)
Paragraph-Level Revision 
Body Paragraphs
Transitions (Annie McClanahan)
Tips for Writing Strong Concluding Paragraphs (Claire Marie Stancek)

Integrating Quotations into Your Prose: Handouts and Exercises
Integrating Quotations Gracefully
Introducing Quotations
Types of Quotations (Karen Leibowitz)
Using Quotations in Your Close Readings (J.P. Huhr)
Basic Guidelines for Integrating Quotations from Poems (Brendan Prawdzik)

Punctuation, Grammar, Syntax and Style: Handouts and Exercises
Sentence Analysis (Paul Hurh)
Clarity and Specificity (Brendan Prawdzik)
A Dozen Don’ts, A Grammar and Style Guide
Thirteen Tips, A Grammar and Style Guide
Subjects and Nominalizations (Karen Leibowitz and Jordan Bulger)
Using Active Verbs
Eliminating Wordiness (Richard Lanham’s Paramedic Method)
Commas, Briefly (Karen Leibowitz)
Commas, Semicolons, and Colons (Brendan Prawdzik)
Semicolons and Colons (Ruth Baldwin)
Parallel Structure (Karen Leibowitz)
Me versus I
That versus Which
Misplaced Modifiers
Editing by Listening to Your Paper  (Maggie Sokolik)

Peer/Self Review Worksheets
Basic Composition Checklist
Checklist for Writing an Awesome Paper Every Time
Revision Questions
Revision Strategies and Checklists (Karen Leibowitz)
Reverse Outline Exercise (Ryan Sloan)
“Speed Dating” Revision Worksheet (Ryan Sloan)
Peer Feedback Worksheet
Peer Feedback Worksheet