Name: ____________________
Period: ____________________
Date: _____________________
Teacher: ___________________
Performative Task: Personal Essay
Achieving Focus, Structure, and Coherence
When a prompt asks you to explore ideas and insights about a topic based on your own
experience, it is directing you to write a personal essay. Use the steps shown to write a
focused, structured, and coherent essay in response to the assignment.
ASSIGNMENT
Read the following quotation.
“Fear doesn’t shut you down; it wakes you up.”
—Veronica Roth
Think about this statement carefully. How can fear have a positive influence on one’s
life. Use a word processing program to write a focused, structured, and coherent
personal essay in which you develop an engaging idea about the ways in which fear
can be constructive or motivating. Demonstrate your depth of thought by crafting
original commentary and supporting it with specific details and examples from your
life.
KEY CONCEPT
All the elements of your essay should work together.
● A focused personal essay stays on point.
● A well-structured personal essay presents narrative elements and insights in a
logical sequence.
● A coherent personal essay is unified, developing an idea sentence by sentence
and paragraph by paragraph.
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To write a focused essay, you must understand the assignment thoroughly. Even though
the clock is ticking, it’s important to read the assignment more than once. Identify key
words, and be sure you know exactly what they mean.
Practice In the boxed quotation, one key word is fear, which relates to an emotional
response to something perceived as dangerous or threatening.
1. What are some other key words in the quotation?
2. Which words in the assignment tell you what you need to include in your essay?
THINK [10 MINUTES]
Choose a specific experience in your life that you feel demonstrates how fear influenced
you in a positive way. You can use a prewriting strategy, such as making a quick list, to
generate ideas. Once you have chosen an experience, record specific ideas and details
that will help you bring the experience to life for readers.
As you gather ideas, consider how you will weave together storytelling elements with
commentary, or insights. Use the space below to brainstorm.
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DRAFT [20–25 MINUTES]
Demonstrate the depth of your thinking by developing an engaging idea and integrating
specific details and examples with commentary.
● Develop an Engaging Idea An engaging idea reflects your unique perspective
and pulls readers into your essay. Decide what you most want readers to
understand from your experience. Write a sentence that states this idea and use it
as the focus, or main idea, of your essay.
● Use Specific Details and Examples Precise descriptions of people, places, and
events add interest and clarity to your essay. Create coherence in your essay by
making sure that the details and examples you choose relate directly to your
focus.
● Integrate Commentary Weave your insights and explanations throughout your
essay. Don’t simply retell a series of events. Instead, explain why the events are
important, what they helped you learn or understand, and how they relate to your
focus.
VAGUE DETAILS
SPECIFIC DETAILS
Something scary happened when I was a
kid.
The most frightening experience of my
life happened a week before my
eleventh birthday, when I was visiting my
grandparents in Galveston.
The animal that we thought was a shark
was coming toward us.
The creature—we thought it had to be a
shark—was huge, gray, and sleek, and
racing toward us at frantic speed.
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Write Now, write your essay, paying attention to the time remaining. You don’t need to
write a set number of paragraphs. Be sure your audience, or readers, can follow your
train of thought. You may use the space below or a separate sheet of paper.
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REVIEW [5 MINUTES]
Check your work. Ask yourself questions like these to confirm that your essay is focused,
structured, and coherent.
● Focused: Have I responded precisely to the assignment prompt? Are my ideas
specific and not too broad?
● Structured: Does my essay have a beginning, a middle, and an end? Do I present
my examples, details, and commentary in a logical sequence?
● Coherent: Do I state my main idea clearly? Does every sentence help to develop
that idea? Do transitions effectively link my ideas?
Make any necessary revisions. Then, proofread and correct any errors in spelling or
conventions.
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Write a Personal Essay
A personal essay is a brief nonfiction work in which a writer explores ideas and insights
about a topic based on his or her own experience. Personal essays express an author’s
thesis, or message, and may include narrative elements, such as description and
dialogue.
ASSIGNMENT
Use a word processor to write a focused, structured, and coherent personal essay in
which you discuss the following question:
Prompt: What can happen when imagination overcomes reason?
Consider the power of imagination in your own life, as well as in literature you’ve read.
Use the elements of a personal essay in your writing.
ELEMENTS OF PERSONAL ESSAYS
PURPOSE: to convey a message about a topic based on personal experience
CHARACTERISTICS
a clear focus on a specific experience in your life
a well-developed thesis, or message, about the significance of the experience
commentary, or explanations and reflections on the topic
strong supporting evidence, including specific details, pertinent examples, and
anecdotes from personal experience as well as related ideas from literature or
other sources
● elements of craft, including vivid and specific descriptions of people, places, and
events
● command of standard English conventions
●
●
●
●
STRUCTURE
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a well-organized structure that includes
● an engaging introduction that establishes the topic
● a logical sequence of explanations and narrative elements that develop the
thesis, or message
● a conclusion that conveys the significance of the experience
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Take A Closer Look At The Assignment
All the elements of your essay should work together.
● A focused personal essay stays on point.
● A well-structured personal essay connects details, examples, and insights in a
logical sequence.
● A coherent personal essay is unified and builds sentence by sentence and
paragraph by paragraph.
Prompt: What can happen when imagination overcomes reason?
Before you begin your draft using a word processing program, be sure you understand
your topic, audience, and purpose, as well as the type of writing required by the
assignment. Use the questions shown here to guide you.
1. What is the prompt asking me to do (in my own words)? Do any keywords give me
details about content or structure?
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2. Is a specific audience mentioned in the assignment? If not, who do I think my
audience is or should be?
3. Is my purpose for writing specified in the assignment? If not, why am I writing this
essay? What do I hope to get out of this writing task?
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4. Does the assignment ask me to use specific types of evidence? If not, what types
of evidence might I need?
5. Does the assignment ask me to organize my ideas in a certain way? If not, how
can I best order my ideas?
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Performance Task: Planning and Prewriting
Before you draft your essay, find a focus that will suit your audience and purpose.
Generate ideas and make connections by completing one of these strategies.
Discover Your Thinking
Freewrite Write freely for 5–7 minutes without stopping. Let your ideas flow naturally.
Don’t focus on your spelling and grammar at this point. Freewriting allows you to
generate ideas when you don’t know what to write about. Your freewriting work is not a
formal writing product, so it does not need to be polished.
● Review what you wrote when the time is up.
● Identify the ideas that suit your purpose and audience. Repeat the process as
frequently as needed, starting from the ideas you marked.
● If you think you’ve hit a dead end, then begin with a new idea and see where that
takes you.
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Discuss: Discuss the prompt with a partner.
● Record two or three memorable experiences that come to your mind. Don’t
include anything you wouldn’t be comfortable sharing with others.
● Discuss your list with your partner. Which idea does your partner find most
interesting? Which one do you think your audience will find most exciting?
● Choose the topic you most want to explore in writing.
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Structure Your Essay: Make a Plan
Use the questions and directions to plan your thesis and organize your essay based on
its topic and your purpose.
Focus Your Thinking Review the ideas you generated earlier and fine-tune your topic. Is
it too narrow? Is it too broad? Make sure your topic is focused but rich enough to merit
attention.
Identify Your Thesis, or Message What makes the experience significant? What do you
want readers to understand? Restate your purpose and the message you want to share.
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Choose an Appropriate Structure Plan how you will organize your essay, sequencing
events and ideas in a logical way that your audience can follow and that makes your
purpose clear. While you may order events in a variety of ways, make sure your essay
includes these basic sections:
Introduction
● Include a hook—such as a question, an anecdote, or an interesting scene—to
engage your audience.
● State a thesis that connects your topic and message.
Body
● Tell what happened.
● Describe your experience in a logical and effective sequence.
● Use transitions to guide your audience.
Conclusion
● Show your audience how the experience changed you or taught you something
important.
● Restate and expand on your thesis.
Create Coherence
In a coherent personal essay, the writing does not feel choppy and disjointed. Instead,
events flow in a controlled, logical sequence, connected by explanations and
commentary. Use these strategies to create coherence in your essay.
● Don’t overload one paragraph with too many actions. Instead, give separate
events, separate paragraphs.
● With rare exceptions use complete sentences that show logical sequences of
ideas or actions as well as thoughtful commentary. A complete sentence contains
a subject and a verb and expresses a complete thought, using proper
punctuation. Sentence fragments and run-ons, including comma splices, are two
common errors that you should avoid.
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Map It: A concept map will help you gather details and think about connections, which
will give you a good start on your personal essay. One model is shown here, but you can
organize your map in any way that makes sense to you.
Use the space below to create your own map. Once you are done mapping, use a
separate sheet of paper to start your rough draft.
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