The Personal Inquiry Essay
Due- Monday 1/24
750-1000 words
The concept of a personal inquiry essay is that you start without an end in mind. You don't necessarily
know how you feel about a subject or what you want to say about the subject. You allow the thinking and
your own writing to determine the outcome. This is writing to learn rather than writing to prove what you
know.
Purpose: The inquiry essay looks at one large question and narrows it to progressively narrower and
more focused questions. The focus of an exploratory essay is a series of questions, rather than a thesis.
While the essay need not reach simple or clear conclusions, through consideration of personal experience
or knowledge, you should arrive at a considered opinion. In this case, you should arrive at some
judgments about globalization through the readings and your own experiences. I also want you to build
into this essay/rumination at least three (3) cited quotes as examples from any of the readings we’ve
done thus far.
1.
The two main ways to compose an inquiry essay yield different effects: The "in-process" strategy
produces immediacy, while a "retrospective" strategy produces more artistically designed essays.
The retrospective traces thinking after the fact.
2.
Exploratory essays chronicle your opening questions and the thinking that results from those
actions. This one requires more editing than the other model.
3.
Exploratory essays can consider how the subject fits into a different context. You could, for
example, consider the impact of globalization in your family, at a parent’s workplace, in the
media, or in an aisle at Walmart.
4.
Exploratory essays can be dialectical in process because they often oppose two positions, which
sometimes (hopefully!) result in a productive synthesis of contraries.
globalization, and what do I reject?
What do I embrace about
This essay is intended to help you reflect on the different views of globalization presented by the authors
and the videos. For this essay, you may wish to start with one of the following questions:
Do the economic, social, or cultural aspects of globalization affect me most?
What is my definition/understanding of globalization?
What changes do you welcome and/or fear?
I would ask that you frame at least three narrower questions that grow out of the first, and boldface
these in your essay. The structure of this essay need not be linear, a certain random or circular logic may
be the natural result of this type of process paper. Some connections between sections are expected,
however.
***While this may look like a journal style rant, I also expect a well edited final product that cuts out the
pointless musing and highlights the real discoveries you’ve made along the way.