ESSAY 1: WRITING ABOUT LANGUAGE
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Due:
Deadline for Email Feedback:
Late Work:
In print, beginning of class on Tuesday, January 29.
(9:30 a.m.) Sunday, January 27
Paper will be docked one full letter grade per class period late.
Assignment: Write a 3-5 page, double-spaced essay founded on one of the prompts below. Write your prompt
choice on your paper before submission.
1. Using Rios` as a template, write a modified zuihitsu on some aspect of language. The paper should blend personal
and public vignettes and fragments, and a unifying theme or thesis should work to unify the piece. There should be a
clear introduction and conclusion in this text.
Ideas for this paper might include the language of mothers/fathers, sisterhood/brotherhood, etc.; or explore
illustrations of a concept like disappointment, loneliness, love, anger, animosity, or ambivalence; or provide another
layer of discussion to the “duality of language,” providing illustrations of experiences where the metaphorical
binoculars were warranted or misused.
2. Choose one aphorism from Porchia’s Voices and write seven different responses to it. As instructed in prompt 1,
blend the public and the private. You might choose to explore the imagery or emotions it evokes, the lesson(s) or
argument(s) it seems to advance, or the way its meaning shifts depending on tone and connotations. Provide a 1page “afterward” in which you analyze the differences and similarities in your passages, how and why your responses
shifted, and what message readers might take from this text as a whole.
3. Using Biss’s form and technique in “The Pain Scale” as your guide, choose a similar device—and index, scale, or
another system of measurement—and write an essay that illuminates the ways we know and understand ourselves
and others. Be sure to prepare a 1-page “afterward” in which you discuss your artistic choices: what was your intent
with this piece? What were you hoping readers would understand after reading it? What was difficult or impossible
to convey with this form and technique?
4. The examples we have read in unit 1 may challenge the idea of “academic writing” with their form and their
blending of the personal and public. For example, one might find an argument or thesis embedded in each of
Porchia’s aphorisms, or one might find a hundred different readings of each. Yet another might question if
something with so many readings ceases to have any meaning at all. However, the texts address serious issues often
discussed in academic writing: the duality of language; the preciseness of arguments; the limits of words in
expressing grief, joy, or trauma.
Using one or two of our readings from unit 1, write an essay in which you consider the genre of the essay—its
purpose, its form and style, its limits and possibilities—through your examination of these texts. Can these texts be
considered essays? What do we gain or lose in experimentations with strategy, form, and technique? Pull textual
evidence (passages) from your authors to help support your main argument and supporting points.
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Guidelines:
MLA format and documentation: 12-pt, Times New Roman font. Name and page number in upper right corner. All
quotes, summaries, and paraphrases must include parenthetical citations and a works cited entry at the end of the
paper. Quotations must be used for direct source language.
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MLA Citation:
Last name, first name. “Title of Essay/Article.” Ways of Reading 9th ed. Eds. David Bartholomae and Anthony
Petrosky. Boston: Bedford, 2011. #-#. Print.