ERIE COMMUNITY COLLEGE TITLE III English Composition Assignment Interdisciplinary Course Materials Culinary Arts Course: Topic: Project title: Project Description: Author: Curriculum Expert: Semester Created: A. English 021/ 023 Persuasive Writing Writing a Persuasive Personal Essay For this assignment, the student will be asked to read two selections written by chefs about their work, and then explain in an essay of about 500 words why he or she would or would not be a good chef. Phyllis MacCameron (North Campus English Department) Paul Stenzel (North Campus Culinary Arts Department) Fall 2007 Basic Directions This assignment will ask you to read two selections and then to write an essay that will persuade its reader that what you are saying is correct. Print out the assignment and its related materials, which are in an accompanying file. Your essay should be word-processed if at all possible. Whether it is printed or not, it should conform to the basic requirements for college essays: it should be presented neatly in black ink, with writing on one side of the paper only. If it is word-processed, it should be double-spaced. Whether your paper is word-processed or not, you should use a heading that gives your name, the course number, the number of the assignment, and the date. The essay should have a title. B. Things to Learn Before Starting the Project This assignment directs you to write a college essay of about two pages. The essay is a personal essay, based on your analysis of your own skills and personality. Since it is required to be a persuasive essay—one that convinces your reader that what you are saying is correct—you will need to be sure you know how to support a main idea with supporting details. This means that you should understand the concepts of the thesis statement (a statement of the overall main idea of an essay or longer work), the topic sentence (a statement of the overall main idea of a paragraph), and the supporting detail. Each paragraph in an essay of this kind is usually a presentation of a single supporting point, and its topic sentence (the main idea of a paragraph) states that point. But that supporting point, being the main idea of a paragraph, will have its own supporting material. It will be up to you to make sure you develop your paragraphs adequately and build your essay in a sensible way. Your textbook should be helpful in explaining these concepts. Page 1 of 4 Erie Community College Title III Grant C. The Project Assignment First, read the accompanying materials, a short statement by Chef Geir Kilen and a longer essay by Joseph George entitled “Becoming a Professional Chef.” These materials should provide you with ideas for your essay. In an essay of about 500 words, write to convince your reader either that you would be a very good chef or that you would not do that job well. If you refer in your composition to ideas or information from either article, refer to the author by name. If you use the words of either writer, use the writer’s name AND use quotation marks. Here are two examples of sentences that make adequate reference for this type of writing: As Chef George points out, a chef needs to be able to tolerate heat. Chef Geir Kilen tells us that for him “it is not ONLY about money.” In later courses, you will be asked to use systems that are more complicated than this for documenting references. The skills you are asked to practice here are the foundation of all those skills. In composing sentences like the ones above, you will be preparing for later work. A note about “I”: In general, college writing does not feature the word “I” often at all. The exception is the personal essay, which can hardly go forward without “I.” However, even in a composition that depends upon the use of “I,” you should work to avoid overuse of that word. It may be possible to rephrase some of your sentences so that they do not hit the reader in the face with “I” all the time. For example, instead of “I hate heat and humidity,” you might say, “Heat and humidity are extremely difficult for me to tolerate.” You’d have said almost the same thing, but without the emphasis on “I.” An added bonus is that if you work towards burying “I” in other parts of the sentence than at the beginning, your essay will have some variety in sentence structure. That is desirable in any essay. D. Student Resources As stated above, your course textbook is probably the first place to go for advice and help in composing a persuasive essay. Since this is a substantial assignment, you might also want to ask your teacher for help outside of class or visit the English Skills Center on your campus. There are many online resources that may be helpful, such as the Online Writing Lab from Purdue University (OWL), available at http://owl.English.purdue.edu. E. Faculty Resources Instructors might want to provide additional reading for their students if time permits. There is a great deal of autobiographical writing related to food preparation. As Joseph George points out, television chefs are NOT very good resources, as the environment of the television chef is always somewhat unrealistic. If time permits, it might be possible to find a local restaurateur who would be willing to appear at a class meeting. Such an event would elevate the writing of the essay to a more important status Page 2 of 4 Erie Community College Title III Grant than the average, and this emphasis on a single project might be good for the EN021 student in the second half of a semester. Resources on essay writing are, of course, ubiquitous for the English professor, but the numerous textbooks intended for EN110 (the next course in the ECC sequence, a credit-bearing course) might help the instructor to find ways to get students to reach upward. F. Grading Rubric See next page. Page 3 of 4 Erie Community College Title III Grant Descriptor The paper is a multi-paragraph unit with an identifiable purpose for each paragraph. The paper has an introduction, a body, and a conclusion. Body paragraphs clearly support the thesis in identifiable ways. Body paragraphs have clear topic sentences. The essay has correct and complete sentences. 4 Accomplished, exemplary The paper has four or five (or more) substantial paragraphs, and each takes on a distinct and clearly signaled task related to the thesis. 3 Competent, average The paper has four or five (or more) paragraphs, possibly of varying substance, with fairly clear distinctions between paragraphs. There may be few signals to guide the reader. The paper is set up so that the reader is invited into the ideas of the composition by a lively introduction, presented with a clear main idea, guided through clear and relevant supporting points, and led to a satisfying finish. The structure of the paper is a source of pleasure to the reader. The flow of the paper is such as to invite the reader to share the writer’s thought in a thoroughly organized way, with each body paragraph taking on a new topic or a new slant on the previous idea(s). The paper is set up to have an introduction, body, and conclusion, and distinctions between parts and ideas are clear, but the guidance given the reader is minimal, and/or the construction seems mechanical and obligatory rather than arising out of the writer’s current of thought. The body paragraphs lead off (or, perhaps, end up) with clear and graceful statements of the paragraphs’ main ideas. The paper is without or nearly without errors. The body paragraphs contain clear statements of the paragraphs’ main ideas, but the effect may be repetitive or mechanical, or overly simple. The paper contains errors, but they do not get in the way of the reading of the essay. Each paragraph takes on a separate task, but the machinery shows: the writer appears to have placed more emphasis on getting through the essay than on leading the reader. 2 Marginal, developing The paper has several paragraphs, but the writer has not grouped ideas in such a way as to begin a new task with each paragraph. Ideas may bleed over paragraph borders, or the paragraphs may be doing more than one job. The paper has an introduction, body, and conclusion, but parts are minimal and mechanical, with little evidence of the writer’s current of thought. The paper does not seem to be oriented toward the reader’s pleasure and clarity. 1 Not yet competent The writer does not observe conventions about paragraphing. The composition is all one paragraph, or randomly divided without apparent reasons for the divisions. The paper reveals an understanding of the concept of supporting ideas, but the ideas are not presented clearly and/or are not contained by the paragraphs but bleed over into other paragraphs and/or are lumped together in one middle paragraph. The body paragraphs slide into development (by examples or other means) without anchoring in topic sentences. The essay has numerous errors that undermine the essay’s credibility. The paper shows little achievement in making distinctions between ideas. If there is any segment of the essay that can be identified as the essay’s body, the ideas are not clearly sorted out. The essay may not even distinguish between introduction and body. The essay shows no clarity in identifying the point each paragraph makes, or the essay does not have body paragraphs. The essay is full of errors. The paper displays little sense of the conventions of providing the reader with an opening, a development, and a closing. The reader seems not to be a priority to the writer. Page 4 of 4 Erie Community College Title III Grant