Submit Discussion 7, your final exam essay, a narrative essay based on models in Module 11. This is a letter-graded assignment, worth 15% of the course grade. Write at least 750 and not more than 1000 words. Use a standard left heading, with your name, the name of the course, the name of the instructor, and the date, and include your work count at the bottom of the heading. Give your essay a thoughtful title. Please be sure to review the sample student essays and the assignment guidelines and to proofread and edit your essay carefully before submitting it. Please avoid the use of second person (“you,” “your,” “yourself,” except where they appear in direct quotations) and work hard to eliminate run-ons, fragments, and other elementary errors marked for you on earlier essays. Please be sure to review assignment guidelines and to proofread and edit your essay carefully before submitting it, taking special care to avoid errors noted for you in previous essays.
A new requirement for this semester’s Discussion 3 assignment (not reflected in the sample essays in Module 11) is this: please refer in your introductory paragraph to a comment by a character in A Child Left Behind about someone from a background different from his/her own, and use at least one direct quotation in the introduction to develop your reference, with a parenthetical in-text citation showing page number. Connect this character’s comment in some way to your focus on your own experience. Use MLA documentation format and include a Works Cited page to cite the novel (and any other source you may refer to, although no others are required).
Proofread and edit your essay carefully before submitting it. SEE A FEW MORE DETAILED ASSIGNMENT REMINDERS BELOW.
REMEMBER: FOR ALL ASSIGNMENTS IN THIS CLASS, COMPOSE AND SAVE YOUR WORK IN WORD OR GOOGLE DOCS, AND THEN COPY (CONTROL + A) AND PASTE (CONTROL + V) YOUR WORK INTO THE TEXT BOX THAT COMES UP FOR YOU. DO NOT SUBMIT A LINK OR AN ATTACHMENT.
Final Examination Narrative Essay Topic
I would like you to narrow your focus to an experience that shaped your attitude toward interacting with people from ethnic, gender-related, cultural, religious, economic, or other backgrounds different from your own.
The purpose of a narrative essay is to tell a compelling, true story in an engaging voice. Your goal is to guide the readers to share the emotional response you had to the incident that you focus on. Generally, in contrast to research-based essays, in a narrative essay there is less emphasis on an explicitly stated thesis, less repetition of obvious framing language in topic sentences and summary sentences, and more emphasis on use of visual imagery and dialog to get your point across. It is important to edit out trivial, boring details and to accentuate powerful, dramatic, or humorous details. Using some dialog might be an effective way to advance the narrative.
Use an introductory paragraph, including the required reference to A Child Left Behind, at least two body paragraphs, and a conclusion.
Outstanding sample student essays are available for review in the Module on Narrative Essay in Etudes. Please read them and learn from them, along with Elmore Leonard’s rules. Proofread and edit your essay carefully, and work hard to avoid run-ons, fragments, and errors in subject-verb agreement, pronoun reference, pronoun case, tense shift, and informal use of second person (“you”). This is your last chance to show me that you can produce a short essay relatively free of mechanical errors. Since evaluation of the content of a narrative essay is more subjective than evaluation of other kinds of writing, I will focus on evaluating your grammar and style in this assignment, but please be sure to note the specific focus indicated above.
