CSULA Department of English | Comprehensive Examination Reading Lists

Composition, Rhetoric, and Language

Reading List for Part One Exam

I. Composition and Rhetoric

  1. Bazerman, Charles and David Russell. Landmark Essays on Writing Across the Curriculum

  2. Bizzell, Patricia. Academic Discourse and Critical Consciousness

  3. Connors, Robert. Composition-Rhetoric

  4. Crowley, Sharon. Composition in the University

  5. Delpit, Lisa. Other People’s Children

  6. Elbow, Peter.Embracing Contraries

  7. Halasak, Kay and Nels Highberg. Landmark Essays on Basic Writing

  8. George Hillocks. Teaching Writing as Reflective Practice 

  9. Kent, Thomas. Post Process Theory: Beyond the Writing Process Paradigm

  10. Perl, Sondra, ed. Landmark Essays on Writing Process

  11. Gary Tate, Amy Rupiper, and Kurt Schick. A Guide to Composition Pedagogies

  12. Shor, Ira. Freire for the Classroom

  13. Silva, Tony and Paul Kei Matsuda.Landmark Essays on ESL Writing

  14. Villanueva, Victor. Cross-Talk in Comp Theory

  15. Tobin, Lad and Thomas Newkirk. Taking Stock: The Writing Process Movement in the 90s.

II. Language and Literacy

  1. Barton, David. Literacy: An Introduction to the Ecology of Written Language

  2. Barton, David and Mary Hamilton. Local Literacies: Reading and Writing in One Community

  3. Comrie, Bernard. Language Universals and Linguistic Typology

  4. Courts, Patrick. Multicultural Literacies:Dialect, Discourse, and Diversity

  5. Cushman, Ellen, Eugene Kintgen, Barry Kroll, and Mike Rose.  Literacy: A Critical Sourcebook

  6. Gilyard, Keith. Voices of the Self

  7. Heath, Shirley Brice. Ways with Words

  8. Kozol, Jonathan. Savage Inequalities

  9. Lightbown, Patsy and Nina Spada. How Languages are Learned

  10. O’Grady, William. How Children Learn Language

  11. O’Grady, William et al. Contemporary Linguistics: An Introduction

  12. Rose, Mike. Lives on the Boundary

  13. Stubbs, Michael.  Language and Literacy

  14. Tannen, Deborah. You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation

  15. Villanueva, Victor. Bootstraps

  16. Wolfram, Walt, and Natalie Schilling-Estes. American English: Dialects and Variation 

  17. Wolfram, Walt, and Erik R. Thomas. The Development of African American

Selected Text for Part Two Exam

The next time the comprehensive examination in this period is offered, the Part Two text will be

Connors, Robert. Composition-Rhetoric