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Essay 1 Assignment Description

The document provides instructions for an assignment asking students to write a short essay exploring their beliefs and experiences with academic writing. Students are instructed to discuss their "journey" with writing in a way that reveals something only they can share. The essay should have an interesting thesis, use first-person pronouns, demonstrate principles of style discussed in class, and follow APA formatting guidelines. Deductions may be made for concision issues, incorrect use of articles/determiners, or failure to meet formatting requirements.

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Amangeldi Gumar
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82 views4 pages

Essay 1 Assignment Description

The document provides instructions for an assignment asking students to write a short essay exploring their beliefs and experiences with academic writing. Students are instructed to discuss their "journey" with writing in a way that reveals something only they can share. The essay should have an interesting thesis, use first-person pronouns, demonstrate principles of style discussed in class, and follow APA formatting guidelines. Deductions may be made for concision issues, incorrect use of articles/determiners, or failure to meet formatting requirements.

Uploaded by

Amangeldi Gumar
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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ESSAY 1 ASSIGNMENT DESCRIPTION

BACKGROUND
Throughout your education, you have no doubt internalized many rules
and guidelines about the nature of academic writing. You have formed
beliefs about thesis statements, topic sentences, first-person pronouns,
the passive voice, the value of creating an outline, and so on. Some of
your beliefs have probably served you well. Others may have confused
you. A few may even have been disputed by different voices—e.g., your
IELTS instructor taught you X, your Rhetoric instructor taught you Y,
but your Political Science instructor expected something else entirely.

If we are to write successfully in the academic world, it is important to


develop a conscious awareness of our beliefs about academic writing
—not only what they are but also how we learned them.

THE TASK
Write a short essay (1200-1500 words) in which you explore your beliefs
about academic writing and how you came to have them. Do not describe
the ideal essay. Do not summarize a list of rules. Rather, focus on your
“journey”—or a part of it. Discuss something that your readers can learn
only from you.

Developing an interesting thesis will be the most difficult aspect of this


assignment. Try to identify a single theme that unifies your thoughts.
You might need to write 1-2 drafts before you discover what the essay is
really about.

You may use first-person pronouns. In fact, it is difficult to imagine how


you could write this essay without them. You should also favor the active
voice unless the context clearly makes the passive voice preferable.

You are welcome to cite sources, but doing so is not required.

AUDIENCE
Please do not write a conventional essay that seems to have been written
for no particular audience.
Rather, as you explore your journey, take Gerald Graff’s advice and ask,
“What conversation am I in? Who cares? Why say it? Who needs to hear
it? Who would argue otherwise?”

Imagine that your readers are genuinely curious about the topic and do
not want to read a scholarly or academic treatment of it. If it seems
natural to do so, you may consider your instructor a member of your
audience. However, you should write with other readers in mind as well.
Most of them will not be familiar with WCS 230 or the nature of your
assignment. Therefore, you should give all of your readers the sense that,
instead of writing an assignment for a class, you have written your essay
because you wanted to share something valuable.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT


To brainstorm, you may think about, mind-map, list, etc.:

• every writing assignment you have ever written for school;


• anything else you have ever written;
• rules or guidelines that you have been explicitly taught;
• rules or guidelines that you have read in textbooks or other materials;
• rules or guidelines that you have inferred from reading successful
prose;
• rules or guidelines that you have invented on your own;
• conflicting advice that you have received about writing;
• successes, struggles, and failures that you have experienced;
• anything else that strikes you as interesting or significant.

Note that the items above are designed to help with pre-writing and to
inspire your thoughts. You do not need to address all of them in your
essay. Focus on your experiences and beliefs about writing in English,
and use the ideas you generate to support your thesis.

WRITE AN ESSAY
Remember the basics: an interesting introduction, a thesis statement,
paragraph unity, topic sentences, connecting devices, and so on.
STYLE
One of the reasons that you are writing this essay is to demonstrate your
command of the stylistic principles we have discussed this semester. To
do so, identify each of the following in your essay:

1. Four sentences that use effective subjects and verbs [1]; in at


least one of these, the character must be non-human; for this
assignment, sentences will be considered effective if the subjects and
verbs match the logical characters and actions;
2. one sentence that achieves cohesion by effectively moving from old
information to new information [2];
3. one long passage that achieves coherence by introducing a topic in
one sentence [3] and effectively repeating it in at least three other
sentences [4a, 4b, 4c, etc.]; note that our textbook uses the word
“topic” in a way that might not match your intuition.

To be clear, you might be able to discover these features in a rough draft,


but it is likely that you will have to compose at least a few sentences from
scratch to ensure that the features are present. Identify them by placing
them in boldface type and labeling each with a number, as you see above.

At the end of your essay, after your references section (if you have one),
include a separate section in which you explain how each of the
numbered items meets the stated requirements. The explanations should
refer to specific words and phrases in your text and to the corresponding
guidelines discussed in Williams & Bizup (2014). Cite the book explicitly.
Use APA format. Quote or summarize the exact guideline. Identify each
explanation by number.

CONCISION
Be appropriately concise. For each sentence in which the principles of
concision have been egregiously disregarded, 1% will be deducted from
the essay’s grade (up to a maximum of 5%).

ARTICLES AND OTHER DETERMINERS


As the class syllabus indicates, your ability to use articles and other
determiners is being assessed throughout the semester. Each missing or
incorrectly used article or other determiner will result in a 1% deduction
from the grade for this assignment (to a maximum of 5%).

FORMAT
Format your document according to the guidelines described in the
Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 7th
edition. These include the consistent use of 1-inch margins, page
numbers, double-spaced text, and a 12-point serif font such as Times
New Roman. The first page of your document should be an APA-style
title page. Refer to the document called “How to Format Your Essay,”
which is pinned to the top of our class Moodle page. Cite your source(s)
according to APA guidelines and include an APA-style references section.
Purdue OWL thoroughly summarizes the APA guidelines and includes a
sample paper. Be sure to follow the guidelines designed for student
papers, not professional papers. A link to OWL is pinned to the top of
our class Moodle page.

You can find a correct reference for Style on Page 1 of the class syllabus.
Your reference should not contain a Moodle URL.

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