School of Writing, Literature, and Film

In the Oregon State Guide to English Literary Terms, our professors define common literary devices and offer short lessons on how to use them in essays and other forms of literary criticism. The series is designed to be a free, online, creative commons (CC BY) resource for high school and college English teachers and students, offering them tools to engage meaningfully with challenging literary texts. To see the videos, please click on the links below.

To support teachers as they transition to distance learning platforms during the current COVID-19 crisis, we've added a few suggestions at the end of each transcript for further thinking and reading. To support dual language instruction, we are beginning to add Spanish as well as English subtitles to our videos. If you would like to read the English or Spanish transcripts of our videos, please click on their titles and you will be directed to pages dedicated to each term.

Interested in learning more about our programs?  Check out our undergraduate degrees in English Literature and Creative Writing. Stay healthy, everybody!