For your first assignment, I’d like you to take a look back at the reader you once were. In this essay I want you to describe the reader you are today and how you got there. Think about the earliest moments you remember of reading or being read to. How did they shape you? Did your mother reading you a certain book teach you to love reading? Or was there a moment in school that caused you to dislike it? If you don’t like to read, it’s ok to write about that. Above all, I want you to write honestly about your connection to literature and books. Think about the person you are now and the person you were when you were small, and how those early exposures to reading changed you into who you are now.
I would also like you to choose one book that made a significant impact on you and use this essay as an opportunity to critically examine why that book is important to you and how you see it influencing you and your life. You’ll want to properly introduce the book, give a brief background or history of it and your relationship with it, and then incorporate this book into the larger essay’s concerns. Remember, this is your autobiography; therefore, you have a significant amount of freedom in terms of scope and content. Just be sure that your final essay is explorative, inquisitive, critical, and most of all: engaging and well-thought-out.
Papers should be: 2-4 pages, single spaced (roughly 500-1,000 words, though more is okay) It is not necessary to use outside research, but if you choose to cite books, internet sources, articles, etc., you must correctly cite your sources with both in-line citations and a works cited page.
Suggestions to help get you started:
I want you to feel free enough to shape this essay as you feel will best express your ideas and memories. However, it’s important that even in this early essay you think about how to construct a formal written assignment. Writing a good essay is about more than just getting your ideas onto paper – it’s about learning how to construct a coherent and structurally sound composition that uses tricks and tools to help your reader follow along.
Your first paragraph should begin with what’s called a “hook.” That means that your first sentence should draw in your reader and make him or her want to keep reading. Make your first line exciting and memorable. Once you’ve got your first sentence down, use your first paragraph to introduce the reader to what’s to come. Use these few lines to grab their attention and focus. This paragraph should lead up to the thesis statement, one of the most important lines in any paper. The thesis should set out the argument for the remainder of the essay and let the reader know your overall argument, the statement that will tie together everything you’re about to say. Usually this is the final sentence of the first paragraph.
After the first paragraph comes the body of the essay. This is where you tell the story; make the connections between ideas, and lead from the introduction to the conclusion, each paragraph building on what’s come before. Each paragraph should have a topic sentence (which tells your readers the topic of the whole paragraph) and a sentence at the end that helps lead into the next paragraph. These transitional sentences help give your writing a good flow from one idea to the next, and keeps your readers focused.
Your conclusion may be the most difficult paragraph to write. A good conclusion doesn’t just repeat what’s been said before, but rather takes the information and story that’s been told and pushes it forward into a new direction. A good conclusion will leave the reader with something to think about, something new to take away from what they’ve just read.
