Write a 3-5 page typewritten essay describing the people and/or events that influenced your thinking about language, writing, or culture. The discovery that you write about may be about English, your language, writing, the American culture, or any other language or culture that you are familiar with. The essay should vividly portray the people or events that you write about through the use of a variety of techniques including those that we have practiced in class--sensory description, naming, detailing, and dialogue. Your goal is to dramatize, or in other words show your readers, the people and events that influenced your attitudes and skill development rather than merely to tell your readers about them. Your essay should reveal to your readers significant insights into your attitudes, values, thinking and beliefs about language, writing, or culture. Your audience for this essay is your teacher and your classmates. Readers should find your essay entertaining and memorable.
The most successful essays will:
1. vividly describe important people and/or events so that they seem
to come to life for the readers
2. focus on significant attitudes, values, or beliefs that the author
has developed about language, writing, or culture
3. be well-organized
4. avoid verb tense errors
5. have scholarly polish.
To receive full credit for this assignment, you will need to write 2 complete revision letters on classmates’ first drafts and 2 complete revision letters on classmates’ second drafts. If you are for some reason absent the days we exchange essays, or if you have not prepared your own drafts for exchange, you are responsible for contacting classmates, getting copies of their essays, and writing the revision letters.