Week 4 Assignments

• LEARNING JOURNAL 4
  
• Please spend 5 to 7 minutes free writing about #3 (“Things That Are (Or Are Not) On Your Mind”) of Professor Rodgers’ “10 Things to Write About” in her ebook _What Is Writing?_.  With free writing, the only rule is that you are NOT ALLOWED TO STOP WRITING.  This means that if you do not have something to say/write, you just write, “I have nothing to say at the moment,” or “My mind is blank,” etc.  Please time yourself for this free writing assignment.

RWA8: Second Draft Personal Essay
DUE: Monday, March 4

For our class Monday, please do the following two things:

1. Revise your first draft based on your peer editor’s suggestions and your own revisions.  During this process you may want to consult my eBook _What Is Writing?_, as well as the following text:
Keys for Writers by Ann Raimes and Maria Jerskey
Download Chapter 1 free of charge:  http://www.cengagebrain.com/shop/content/raimes99823_0495799823_02.01_part01.pdf

2.  Complete Questions #1 and #5 on the worksheet that we were working on in our last class.  In Question #5, you will pose some questions about college writing.

RWA7: First Draft Personal Essay

For our class Wednesday, please bring TWO printed copies of the first draft of your personal essay.  This draft will have some type of introductory paragraph and some body paragraphs.  It will also have a working title.  It WILL NOT HAVE a conclusion.

To prepare this draft:  First, read over your exploratory draft and take notes on it.  What is it about?  What is the “story” that you are trying to tell?  What is the best way to tell this “story”?  What are some of the most interesting passages in your draft?  Do these support what you think your personal essay is about?  If no, should you perhaps change your focus to make it possible to include these passages?  Is there a possible working thesis statement in this draft?  Are there sentences, points, or passages that could become paragraphs?

Depending on how you write, next either make an actual or mental outline and start writing your first draft.  Remember: you are not starting from scratch.  You have these notes and ideas from your exploratory draft that you are using to expand into paragraphs.  While your writing at this point should make sense to a reader, I do not want you to worry about editing or proofreading your sentences.  If there are typos that you see, go ahead and fix those.  However, please expend all of your energy at this stage on making sure that everything you have to say has been written down.  Once you have shaped the material that you have into something that looks like an essay, print out two copies. Make sure it has a working title.  We will be discussing these on Wednesday.

RWA6: Brainstorming Exercise
Professor Rodgers
College Writing

Brainstorming Exercise, e.g., “Back of the Napkin” Assignment

DUE: Monday, Feb. 25

First, please read over the Personal Essay guidelines below. Then, please spend some time writing about what you want the focus of your personal essay to be.   You can write many pages, a list, or just a short note, but please spend anywhere from a half hour to an hour thinking about this. If you prefer to bring in an audio file or video file of yourself talking about your topic, that is also fine.

Second, please spend one-half hour writing an exploratory draft of your Autobiographical Essay.  Before you start this, you may want to consult some of your Writing Journals for our class and/or some of the personal essays that we have read.

Personal Essay Guidelines
Professor Rodgers
College Writing
City Tech
BRAINSTORMING:  2/25
EXPLORATORY DRAFT DUE:  2/25
DRAFT 1 DUE: 2/27
DRAFT 2 DUE: 3/4
DRAFT 3 DUE: 3/5
FINAL DRAFT DUE: 3/6

The focus of our first essay is yourself, your life, and/or your interests and experiences!  Please choose some specific topic to write about.  This could be anything:  your childhood, your family, your educational experiences, your interest (or non-interest) in reading, your relationship(s) to technology, your love of animals, the place where you live, etc., etc.

The essay, which will be two to three pages in length, will be graded on the effort you have put into thinking about the personal essay as genre, your approach to this particular essay, and your presentation of your material to your audience. The essay should include a title, a thesis statement, well structured paragraphs, and writing that not only clearly describes and explains information, but also engages your reader. For MLA essay formatting guidelines, see http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/  or your English handbook.

Please make sure you write this essay for a specific audience.  This audience can be your instructor, your classmates, the students at City Tech, or the readers of a particular publication.  I ask you to choose and specify an audience so you know who you are writing to and tailor the content and style of your essay to that audience.