Writing Task One

English 100 Writing Task One – Describing Significant Carefully

The neighborhood you grew up in, the school you attended, the homeless man you pass on your way home every night, your best friend, the high school teacher who told you that you would never succeed, the annual summer vacation you take with your family, your family members, your successes and failures, your joyful and tragic moments…

Whether we consciously acknowledge it or not, each of one of us is influenced and shaped by all of our past experiences. We define ourselves and our place in the world by how we affect and are affected by others. We can be made stronger by both success and failure, by those who love and reject us. We remember both the small and large events of our lives, deciding which lessons, experiences and people to embrace and emulate and which ones to renounce.

What people and experiences have shaped and influenced you? What memories are most vivid? What stories do you continue to tell?

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Introduction: The activities (readings, class discussions, in-class writings, journal entries, workshop lessons, peer revision groups) you are doing during this unit will help you recall meaningful details about a significant person, place or event in your life and will help you to write about these details. Your writing will describe this significant person, place or event in such a way that the meaningfulness of your subject becomes clear. In class and in Writer’s Workshop, you will explore prewriting and drafting strategies and will develop strategies for both organizing and including specific details in your writing. The essay you write for this unit will have a clear, controlling idea and should create a dominant mood, feeling or expression.

Reading Assignment: You will read a variety of essays from your textbook in which the authors have also written about the significance of a person, place or event. Use these essays to both help you generate ideas for topic development as well as to guide you in structuring and organizing your essay.

Writing Assignment: For this first section, we have read a variety of essays from your textbook in which the authors have written about a significant person, place or event. As a result, I would like you to think about a significant person, place or event in your life. For this essay, you will write meaningfully about a significant person, place or event in your life. You will describe this person, place or event and will also reflect on and explain the significance and importance of this person, place or event to your life. I will assume that your choice is truly significant, but the nature of the significance must also be demonstrated if your essay is to succeed. You must go beyond description and explain to your audience how this person, place or event has impacted your life, your decisions, your actions and/or beliefs. Your assigned audience is simply any interested reader who does not already know you or the person, place or event you will describe. Since your actual audience, your classmates and I, will be getting to know you better, you might think of this essay as a good way to let them know more about you. Hence, you need to choose a topic that you feel comfortable sharing with others and one that you can fully develop with specific details.

Structure and Organization: Your essay should have a definite beginning, middle and end. In your introduction, you should have a clear, controlling idea—that is, the point you want your audience to understand. In your body paragraphs, you should develop and communicate this main idea. You will incorporate specific examples and precise, thorough and well-chosen details in a planned order in order to make your writing more interesting and meaningful. The meaningfulness and importance of your subject must be clear and you must answer your reader’s questions about your subject. As you develop your essay in this manner, you should also aim to create a dominant mood, feeling or impression. In your conclusion, you should emphasize the significance of your subject.

Evaluation Guidelines:

Content

• Have you effectively described a significant person, place or event?
• Does your essay have a clear and controlling idea that goes beyond description and conveys the significance and impact of this person, place or event?
• Does each part of your essay develop and control your main idea with specific examples, anecdotes, details and explanations?
• Does your essay answer questions your readers might have about your topic?
• Does your essay have a balance between description and explanation?

Structure:

• Does your essay have a clear beginning, middle and end (introduction with thesis statement, body paragraphs and conclusion)?
• Does your introduction contain a clear, controlling idea?
• Are your body paragraphs focused on one topic and fully developed?
• Does your conclusion cohere to the entire essay?

Style:

• Is your essay free of grammatical or mechanical errors that might distract your readers?
• Have you spelled-checked and edited (for sentence structure, homophones and apostrophe errors) your essay?

Finally, the essay must be at least two full pages in length, word-processed and spell-checked. Page length will be measured as if you had used a double-spaced Times New Roman 12 point font, without excessive boldface or extra spacing, with 1” margins top and bottom and margins on the sides. These are very common default settings for most word-processing programs. You may use other fonts, spacing and margins, but doing so may vary what is regarded as a full page. I will not accept/pass any paper that does not meet the page length requirement.

** If you do not meet all of the above requirements, you will not pass this writing task.

** Due dates for the rough draft and final draft appear on your assignment schedule.