Student Learning Outcome Justification:
Students should be able to:
Write essays based on personal experiences, observation, and/or assigned readings.
Demonstrate the ability to edit writing to eliminate jargon, choppiness, dullness, and incoherence to produce a smooth, vivid style appropriate to the subject and the audience.
Demonstrate the ability to proofread writing to eliminate sentence structure errors, verb and pronoun errors, punctuation errors, and spelling errors.
Overview:
The purpose of the narrative is to master the narrative form and to learn to use writing as a way to explore and reveal. You will write a personal statement similar to those you might use for a college application essay or scholarship essay, but a central feature of this essay is going to be on storytelling.
For this essay, you may respond to any of the following prompts:
What does writing mean to you and what in your life has shaped your perspective of reading and writing?
The lessons we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to later success. Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?
Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea. What prompted your thinking? What was the outcome?
Describe a problem you’ve solved or a problem you’d like to solve. It can be an intellectual challenge, a research query, an ethical dilemma – anything that is of personal importance, no matter the scale. Explain its significance to you and what steps you took or could be taken to identify a solution.
Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others.
Prompts 2-5 are adapted from Common App.
Some tips in drafting your narrative:
I do not want to read your life story. Try to focus on a single illustrative moment. That being said, do not let the story speak for itself, but rather make sure that the message of what you are illustrating is clear (and probably stated explicitly).
Your voice will probably be more informal than one you would use for a research paper, but do keep in mind your audience – I cringe at foul language and get angry when I hear racial slurs.
Your final draft should be clean – not only grammatically sound and well-organized, but also sophisticated and enjoyable to read.
Prosaic Concerns:
Your final product will be a short paper (750 words)
The paper should be in MLA format, but you should not need extra research or a works cited page. However, if you do choose to quote another source, you will need to cite it. Please do not quote the dictionary.
Rubric:
If you complete a 750 word essay that is turned in on time and is not plagiarized, then you will receive an automatic 70 points. The other 30 points are based on these three criteria:
Content:
The narrative is relevant, unified, coherent, and engaging. It includes both effective storytelling and effective reflection. (15 points)
Grammar and Style:
The narrative is well proofread and contains a consistent voice appropriate for a college audience. (10 points)
Formatting:
The paper is formatted according to the instructions in the MLA style guide. (5 points)
