Welcome to CSU, Sacramento's
Online Writing Lab.
This is the index page, the foyer to the CSUS
OWL. From here you can navigate the different sections of the OWL. To return
to this menu, just click on the gold-colored "Home" button you will always find
in the upper right corner of every page within the OWL. Additionally, some pages make use
of the right and left gold-colored arrows. If you are running a 4th generation browser,
the cursor tip will indicate navigational options. You will also find navigational links
at the bottom of most pages.
This OWL makes use of JavaScript in an attempt to
increase the interactivity of the various pages. Much of the OWL has been
specifically designed to augment English classes at CSUS and the Los Rios Community
Colleges; as a result, you will frequently find exercises with email prompts and drop-down lists of instructors' names.
Other sections of the OWL, particularly the
sentence-level exercises, have been designed for use as a general review--and these pages
will usually give more immediate feedback.
Whenever possible, the pages have been designed to
be interactive: to either ask for or give some kind of feedback, to allow you to apply
concepts, patterns and information (watch the status bar at the bottom of your screen, for
instance). Even though you will find occasional "static" pages, the
intent of this OWL is to explore the ways in which web technology reflects and affects
critical reading and writing skills and processes, to explore ways we weave our thoughts
and associations into a kind of coherent web.
Interaction is the main focus of this OWL because
of the dialogic nature of reading and writing, especially academic reading and writing.
Academic reading and writing, at their best, should be reflective responses to the
text or class discussion, and should provoke simultaneous internal and external dialogues
in search of meaning.
You can access the opening page for
each of these sections by either selecting the appropriate page from the drop down list to
the left and clicking on the "Go" button, or by clicking on the hypertext links
at the bottom of this page.
Please note that the OWL is currently
under development and will be updated frequently. If you have ideas to offer, we
would really enjoy hearing from you; please use the email link or the snail-mail address.
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