ESSAY ASSIGNMENT
English 9
Mr. Castellano
Your next essay assignment is your choice. While we are working on Othello, I do not
want the good writing skills you have been developing to get rusty. So you will have the choice
to write any one (1) of the different kinds of essays we have written so far this year. These are
the types of writing we have done:
 Personal Narrative: you tell a story about yourself. You focus on one fairly specific
event, experience, person, etc.
 Descriptive Essay: you describe a person, place, or thing in specific detail, revealing your
ideas and feelings about it.
 Expository Writing: most of the writing we do is expository. This is writing that explains
and exemplifies a process or belief. When we did the expository essay, you wrote about
a family tradition.
 Persuasive Writing: you try to convince your reader of the rightness of your belief or
position about something.
Choose one of these types and write a good essay. Here is your chance to write about something
you really like and are interested in. I have written some ideas below. We will work a little on
the essay in class, but this is one I want you to do mostly on your own. At this point, you should
be able to do the process yourself. Do all the things we have done all year: brainstorming;
choosing a topic; forming a thesis; listing ideas and details; outlining; getting ideas down;
writing a first draft; editing and revising; writing several drafts; proofreading. Work on your
essay during the long weekend. All the sheets about the different types are on the web site. The
essay should be 1-2 pages typed or 4-6 sides handwritten, double-spaced either way. It is due on
Monday, 12 May. It is worth 100 points. Do your best.
SOME IDEAS
 Personal Narrative: Write about a significant person or experience in your life. Your
thesis is the meaning that person or experience has in your life. You can write about an
event that has happened this year.
EXAMPLE: The turning point of my freshman year was when . . . .
 Descriptive Essay: Describe a thing or place that is important to you. Be as specific as
possible. You can describe an instrument, something in your room, a favorite place.
EXAMPLE: The watch my Grandmother gave me is my most precious possession.
 Expository Writing: it might be interesting to write about how to do something: cook
your favorite meal, play your instrument, do something in your favorite sport.
EXAMPLE: When I bake bread with my family, we all enjoy the pleasures of all five
senses we use in making it.
 Persuasive Writing: pick a political or social position and argue your opinion.
EXAMPLE: The best person to be the next President is . . . .
Recently, I baked some bread with my daughters – the first time working with them, and my first
baking in over ten years. Having been away from baking for so long, I proceeded hesitantly at first. But
very quickly the process was, once again, very familiar. From the moment we started to assemble the
ingredients, all the old feelings came rushing back: the rich, sour smell of the yeast fermenting; the awe
before the rising of the dough; the tactile pleasure of the kneading. For years, baking bread had been a
source of both spiritual and physical satisfaction, but it had slowly slipped away – along with several
other mundane pleasures. Now, with the simple act of mixing some water, flour, yeast, and honey (a
seeming game to my four-year-olds), I found this joy from the past instantly rekindled and alive.
What is so great about baking bread? For one thing, the utter simplicity captivates me. In a
world of too much processing – and not just of our food – baking my own bread is a refreshing and
rejuvenating break from artificiality and unnecessary complexity. As an urban dweller, I am always
pretty far removed from the sources of my food and the means by which it is created. And, of course, I
have all the typical fantasies about (someday) living off the land. But, thinking more realistically, I will
probably never do that. In place of that, then, I take pleasure in working with these most elementary
ingredients and producing something wonderful. Although the whole process of making bread takes
hours (one of the many reasons I have slipped away from it), the process itself is quite simple: add the
yeast to water; mix it with some flour; let it rise; kneed it; bake it. Beautiful.
Another joy of baking bread is the sensual pleasure that accompanies it. It engages each of
the senses, not just the obvious one of the rich taste of warm, real bread when it first comes out of the
oven. Mixing the yeast with the water produces an acrid, powerful odor. When I first baked, I found the
odor quite distasteful. But it is a smell I have come to cherish. Having not smelled it for so many years,
my recent encounter with it was wonderful. The sight of the rising of the dough is almost magical.
Baking with my daughters only increased this aspect of the experience: they really believed it was magic.
The solid, resounding thump of my knuckles on the crust of a well-baked loaf is akin to that perfect sound
of the baseball coming off the bat: I cannot describe, but I know it when I hear it. But, for me, the
greatest physical pleasure of making bread is the kneading. Again, in a world in which I often feel so
isolated from contact with anything earthy, the feeling of the moist, warm dough beneath my fingers is
delightful. It is real work, too, to knead the dough; in that sense, I feel that I am at least somewhat
earning my daily bread. And that physical work that goes into the making of the bread only increases the
joy I feel at the end of the process.
Although I may be stretching the point a bit, I do feel that there is also a spiritual pleasure to
baking bread. For me, it is the joy of being fully attuned to the process of the making and being part of
it from beginning to end. So much of what I do is product-oriented: I am less involved in the getting
there and more concerned with the arrival. Of course, I do love the end-product of baking. But what
makes it especially rich and joy-filled is that I cannot get there quickly. Baking bread compels me to slow
down, to be attentive, to work with mindfulness: to be present to the moment. I cannot blame twentiethfirst century life completely for that flaw. But I can say that so-called modern conveniences certainly get
between me and truly experiencing the world around me.
I am practical enough (cynical enough?) to know that baking a few loaves of bread is not going to
change the world. But I am also hopeful enough to believe it can help to keep me a little bit more in
touch with my surroundings and, as such, make me a little less mechanized. There is also the joy I
experienced in passing this pleasure on to my daughters. As they come of age in the 21st century, I am
sure baking bread will seem more and more arcane. But I am also hoping it will be a refreshing piece
of reality in a world more and more virtual.
underlined sentences or words: transitions
bold sentences: topic sentences