Welcome to the end of the semester,
Everything that is a lesson has been posted either here, in the Modules, or as a note in the Announcements. It would be incorrect that this final Assignment holds nothing new, but for the greater part, the Assignment will be a collation of lessons and guidelines from posts across the semester.
This Week’s Assignment is to write a Personal Narrative. Similar to the Literacy Narrative, you are invited to compose your submission with informal language, using the first person Point of View. The Personal Narrative is one of my favorite genres, and developing it can sometimes evolve the work into an Autobiography or a Memoir – related but distinctly separate genres.
One of the compositional disciplines I want to direct this with is the practice of precision and brevity. Choosing the right phrase or subject to cover is one of the “scaffolding” aspects that provide the “structure” with content. So toward that, one of the guidelines is that the narrative comes in between 450-500 words. I will not judge a word or three going this way or that, but a 300-word or 700-word submission will see its score negatively affected.
For purposes related to this class, your narrative will need to be composed as an argument. This means that the claim in your thesis statement should be you claiming something true about yourself.
Example Personal Narrative thesis statement: My greatest interests have always been in how poets relate themselves and their work to a readership – even though the language used by the poet is always entirely personal, successful poetry stimulates emotions that are similar to the emotions that evoked the poet to compose.
Now that’s for me, and it likely doesn’t relate to you unless you are also a poet, but there is something true about you that you can claim and compose as a structured argument. The structure of the argument in this Assignment is the relatively conservative and straightforward genre of the Academic Essay, and another one of the guidelines is that it includes an introduction that culminates in a thesis statement followed by at least two topics that support the thesis statement, and a conclusion. It should be no fewer than three and no more than six paragraphs. It should include a minimum of one in-text citation that is no longer than two lines of text. If you make a second citation, it should also be no longer than two lines of text. If you choose to include three citations, one of those citations can be no longer than one line of text. This means: five lines of citable composition is allowed maximum.
Do not include citations in your conclusion.
Remember to make in-text citations. Remember to include a Works Cited page.
Use MLA General Format in the organization of your submission. Its correct usage will be factored into your score.
Use a heading and a header.
The header is:
Your last name followed by the page number. It should be located in the headers field on the document, in the upper right corner.
The heading is:
Your name
Your instructor’s name and/or title
The course number (including the course name also is not disallowed)
The date of submission
Double-space the lines.
Indent the first line of a paragraph (not indenting the first line of the Introductory Paragraph is considered okay).
Use 1-inch margins.
Use a 12-point serif typeface (such as Times New Roman or Garamond).
And remember this from the previous lesson’s post – it will guide you through the structure like a map.
The Essential Structure Points of a Story:
Character
Setting
Conflict
Plot
Theme
NOTE THIS: a final twist…
Because this is an Analyze for Process exercise, please include in the “plot” aspect of this narrative HOW you became the person that you claim to be in your thesis statement. This final twist may be one of the more complex logic tasks assigned to you this semester, and it is an important factor of more advanced critical thinking. In an argument always query HOW that could be true – the process used to arrive at a conclusion. Without a good HOW, there may be fallacy involved. AND always be prepared to offer the HOW to any queries into your own arguments. Be mindful of avoiding fallacy.
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Please note: 5/4 is the last day of regular classes and 11:59 pm is the cutoff for all Assignments posted during the semester.
I look forward to learning more about you.
The ESSENCE of this Assignment is: Introduce yourself. Say something that’s true about you. Use topics and citations to prove this is true about you. USE THE CONTENT GENERATORS IN THE 3345 DIRECTORY. Conclude by affirming that what you said about yourself is true based what you just wrote. Then get out of there.
