Here is the assignment for our first Essay.

This assignment will require you to reflect on an important part of your identity as a scholar: Your Writing Life. It addresses Student Learning Outcome (SLO) #5: “Describe and reflect on their own writing processes, including revisions made in consideration of peer and/or instructor feedback.”

Write a 1000 word essay about your writing life. This is a personal exploration. It can include a narrative about your early writing years: how you learned to write, your techniques, influences, habits, likes/dislikes about writing. You can write about your past, present and future relationships to writing. Include various contexts—writing for school, but also letters to your grandparents, and notes you may have passed in class (or texted), writing you may do in your future career. How do you feel about writing in various contexts? What lessons have you learned? What are your favorite tools? (Consider “hardware,” like computer keyboards, pencils or pens, and “software,” like spellcheck, word processors, paperback dictionaries, your own vocabulary.) What practices nurture your writing? You may want to consider your reading life as well.

To get started you might want to answer the questions that begin on the bottom of page 24 and the bottom of page 3 in The Academic Writer, your blue book.

In your essay, describe (summarize!) your writing practice. What do you do when you first get an assignment? (What did you do when you first got this assignment?) What advice have you heard from past teachers or friends? What works for you?

Here are the details:

• Your child’s draft will be due Friday, June 20 at 5 PM.
• Final draft due Thursday, June 26, before class.
  

Grading Criteria

When I grade your essay I look for the following:

• A concise and descriptive title.
• A clear and focused thesis. (Not necessarily a thesis statement in the first paragraph, but I should know what your thesis is by the time I finish reading your paper. Hint: for this assignment your basic thesis should be “This is my writing practice.” To make that thesis even more focused, you should describe how your writing practice identifies, influences, and nurtures you as a scholar.
  
• Vivid, detailed description of your writing life.
• Thoughtful analysis of your writing practices.
  
• Clear organization of your material into coherent paragraphs.
• Clear, error-free writing.