REMINDER ABOUT THE PROCESS FOR ESSAY #1
Everyone,
You should send me a proposal for your first essay (after reading the Instructions and the
document on thesis statements in the Essays folder) asap.
(I will post this reminder on the Website in the ESSAY folder, so that you’ll have a copy
in case you cannot locate it in your email.)
TOPIC:
Your topic must be narrow and specific enough for you to discuss and describe in detail.
Please read the first three essays on the list posted on the class Website. Even if they deal
with a relationship over a long period of time, they focus on particular moments or events
(for example, in “Dad”). Writing about your entire life or the relationship with someone
over eighteen or twenty years in general terms will likely result in a bland essay. Pay
attention to what the professional writers do to effectively communicate their
experiences.
PURPOSE AND POINT OF VIEW:
Your purpose in this essay is to convey to readers (the instructor, classmates, other
students elsewhere) a significant place, an important person (or relationship), or an event
or series of events which affected your life. The emphasis here is on YOUR life and
YOUR perspective. And yes, you can (should) use first person (“I”) in the essay. This
should not be something a real estate agent or a travel brochure might present about your
neighborhood or Chicago, for example. We all know about North Michigan Avenue and
downtown parks on Lake Michigan, etc.,etc. Tell your readers something we don’t know
now, something about how a place or person or event affected you personally.
THESIS:
You must have a thesis by the time you have worked through notes or invention exercises
or even a first draft. Your thesis must be precise and specific, and you can state it
anywhere in your essay—at the end of the first paragraph, as you may have been taught;
at the end of the essay itself, if you want to build up to a logical or dramatic conclusion;
somewhere in between. It must be narrow and not something as broad as “These two
events (or people) were alike and different.” If you start with that, you should have, by
the time you have written your draft and re-read it, refined it to a more specific thesis.
Remember those questions that were on the board: Who? What? Why? Where? When?
How? You should use those to narrow your thesis and then answer those questions in
your essay, though which one(s) you spend most of your time and energy on will depend
upon your purpose in the essay. Certainly, though, a reader should be able to understand
WHY this event/person/place was important to you.
ORGANIZATION:
If you are telling us about something that happened to you in the past, you might tell your
story in chronological order, that is, the order in which the events happened. Or if you are
describing a place, you might still use narrative to take the reader with you on a tour of
the place, starting with the neighborhood, walking down the street, entering the house,
and so on. In that latter case, you might use “you” as a direct address to the reader (the
best way to use that pronoun). That narrative structure is fine for your draft as long as you
focus on what is important. The order you choose should come from your purpose, not
something imposed from outside. In other words, if you were taught to write the fiveparagraph theme, you may find that structure does not work here.
PROCEDURES:
As noted in the syllabus and in the description of the essay, you are expected to go
through the process of invention (notes, freewriting, exercises), drafting, peer review, and
then revision for every essay. Please keep that material-- if it ends up in your paper--and
submit it with your essay so that I can see how you developed your ideas. Print two
copies of the essay and a peer review sheet, and be ready to do peer review when you
arrive at the start of class. You should hand in one copy of your essay at the very start of
class so that it is not counted late. I’ll say a few things about this process before you
begin and make sure everyone has at least one reader. After I have seen more of your
work, I may assign you to permanent groups.
QUESTIONS?
Please get back to me if you have questions. What you are producing now is a draft, not a
final paper, but I expect to see that you have put work into the draft, and I will assign it a
“pass/not pass” type of grade. The more work you put into this, the more I can help you
polish it up and revise it into a really good essay.
FOR WEDNESDAY: Also please remember to print out a copy of the Wong essay and
bring it to class with you on Wednesday.
Beverly