English writing essay

Part 2: Essay

Full draft (including References page) due in-class for peer review Monday Sept 24 – post your draft to the appropriate Discussions thread before coming to class

Peer review comments, posted to Discussions thread, completed by 9PM Tuesday Sept 25

Wednesday Sept 26, Peer review discussion in class

Revised draft due for teacher review Monday Oct 1 – submitted to Canvas (under “Assignments,” “Assignment #5.”)

In the last few weeks we have explored the connections among rhetoric, writing and education, and (in the context of our discussion of the Writing Across Borders video) have considered how expectations for writing in any one context (national, education, professional, etc.) are culturally constructed.

For this assignment (4 or more pages, excluding the References page, typed and double-spaced) I would like you to write a literacy or learning/educational autobiography or “auto-ethnography,” focused on a particular experience or small set of experiences of your own. This writing is an opportunity to reflect on your own experiences with communication, language and learning or personal growth, and then to share that experience and what you have learned from reflecting about it with your readers (your audience being the other members of this class). As you brainstorm ideas and begin thinking about a focus for your essay, you might return to the literacy inventory you wrote previously.

Here are your prompts (please choose one):

1. Write about a time in which communication, or the lack thereof, afforded you an opportunity to overcome a difficulty, or created an opportunity for learning or personal growth. In other words, write about a time when communication acted as either a barrier or a blessing (or both) in your life.

2. Write about an event in your life that changed the way you think. Perhaps this event made you take yourself and your education more seriously. Perhaps it is the reason you are here today. Pick that kind of a “major” event in your life and tell the reader the story. (Remember to relate your story to your reader!)

As you write your draft:

· First, try thinking as a writer, i.e., think rhetorically, keeping in mind that you are writing a personal story that should connect your readers to some experience they also might relate to. (Keep in mind here how Adichie makes her experiences relatable to her audience, by for example using lots of concrete details, and by offering examples of times when even she believed in a “single story” about others.)

In other words, your story should have a meaning – something that readers can identify as important to them, as members of a larger audience.

· Second, remember that your voice counts! Even though you are writing to an academic audience (i.e., your peers and me) we still will want to hear your voice. After all, this is a story about you. Don’t try too hard to adapt your writing to any generic, academic “template.”

· Third, as you reflect on your history, be as specific and concrete and detailed as possible in the examples you offer as illustrations. Your goal is not simply to tell your experiences to your readers, but to show them what those experiences have meant for you through the details you use.

· Finally, the only conventional, academic requirement for this essay is for you to use direct references to/quotations from two other texts. The references you use may be the Writing across Borders and/or “The Danger of a Single Story” videos. Other reference(s) that you find in the library or on the internet (keeping in mind that you will need to consider the validity and potential biases of internet sources especially) may help you to connect your personal experience to the historical/social/cultural context within which they occurred – and so to other readers. Be sure that each quotation you use is followed by an in-text citation, using correct APA style for both in-text citations and your References page. Consult carefully the DK Handbook or another source as you draft your essay.

You might find, as you go about writing this story that you are still learning from it. As we will see from the example of John Lewis’s March, writing is itself one of the best methods and tools for self-reflection and learning.