Reflective Essay 1

First Draft due Tuesday, January 17

Final Draft due Wednesday, January 18

Four to Six Pages, Typed, Stapled with First Draft, and Double-Spaced

For this assignment you will write a personal narrative in which you tell your story about learning how to write in English.

You should either organize your essay as a chronological narrative or in terms of specific problems that you have encountered. In a chronologically-ordered narrative your paragraphs should follow a timeline, and you should have paragraph breaks whenever there are turning points and/or the setting shifts. Examples of turning points are starting to receive tutoring, receiving feedback on a piece of writing, starting an activity that helped you to improve a specific skill, or arriving at a situation where your writing skills had to improve. Note that, although in a chronological narrative you are organizing your paragraphs according to time, you will still need to describe specific problems that you have had to solve in order to become a better writer. If you organize your essay according to problems it should be clear why you discuss one problem before or after another. In both cases, you should have at least one paragraph (possibly your conclusion) in which you focus on at least one aspect of writing academic essays that you need to work on this quarter.

Here are some variables that will differentiate the personal narratives: English as a first language/English as a second language; English spoken at home/another language spoken at home; previous English classes in college/first English class is EWRT211; English learned as an academic subject in a non-English-speaking country/English learned in ESL classes in an English-speaking country/writing learned in general education classes in an English-speaking country.

In order to describe problems it will be helpful for you to read the portfolio scoring guide for keywords. Make sure that you develop your points with specific examples and details.

Here are possible participation points you can earn in class for this essay:

  • 2 points: Present topic to group
  • 4 points: Workshop outline with one group member. Your outline should clearly show the problems that you have encountered as you have learned how to write in English.
  • 4 points: Workshop first draft with one group member

Here are possible participation points you can earn out of class for this essay:

  • 2 points: Presentation write-up (a printed-out outline or an outline e-mailed to me before class on the day of the presentation can count as the presentation write-up)
  • 2 points: Presentation response (e-mail one of your group members and cc the e-mail to me to get credit)

Before you turn in a final draft I advise you to visit the WRC and ask a tutor what kinds of repeated errors you made on the essay with regard to language use and how you can correct them. If you visit the WRC please check in with me after your visit.

The assessment for the essay will abide, when possible, with the Portfolio Scoring Guide for EWRT211.

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