Paper #1 The Personal Essay and Storyselling

1. Paper #1The Personal Essay and Storyselling Really? You want me to write about me?!!! Why would I belong in the essay?

2. Requirements for Paper #1 (Storyselling) • Your first essay must use storyselling. • Storyselling (a marketing term) = recounting a specific experience and then explaining what you learned so that your readers change their future behavior. • You will do 100 points of prewritingfor the essay. • The final draft will be worth another 100 points.

3. The Course Description on the Syllabus: Ourprimary focuswill be the personal essay, the production of which will allow each student to develop anauthenticandinterestingwriting “voice.”

4. Why do I need an “interesting” and “authentic” writing voice?

5. Academic writing gets you to please teachers. Don’t you know the difference between their and there yet?

6. Teachers, though, are a really small percentage of readers.

7. Your other readers will finish your writing only if you 1) get their attention and then 2) offer them value, a reason to continue reading.

8. So you must be interesting and authentic if you want people to read until they reach the end of whatever you have written.

9. So what is apersonal essay,and how do I develop anauthentic voice?

10. Use first-person pronouns in a personal essay. • First person = I, me, my, mine, myself (singular) or we, us, our, ours, ourselves (plural). • Use personal experience to support what you say. Write about people you know, things you’ve experienced, places you’ve been. • No one wants to hear about people or things in general—really!

11. Personal essays are shared, so keep in mind that you are not the audience for your work—your readers are.

12. Yeah, but some of my English teachers said neverto write about myself—never ever to use Iin an essay!

13. They were wrong!!! I’m an interesting person, so writing about me and my experiences should be fun!

14. Develop an authentic voice when you write. • Many essay topics will be vague and general. Your job is to transformthose topics so that you write an interestingessay. • Narrowthe topic as much as possible. • Cover one thing wellinstead of many things superficially. • Anticipate what your classmates will write or what your readers expect, and then choose a different approach.

15. Narrowing a Topic Topic: A place that minors should avoid unsupervised 12-year-olds malls My nephew Maurice The Florida Mall

16. An Award-Winning Thesis Statement The Florida Mall is the wrong place for my twelve-year-old nephew Maurice to spend time because he foolishly blows all of his allowance, hangs out with friends who shoplift, and eats too much junk at the food court.

17. Can you show me some student samples?

18.  Topic:A time in history that you would like to visit A student writes: I would love to return to November 1993 to stop the conception of my younger sister Tonya.

19.  Topic:A time in history that you would like to visit A student writes: People should travel to the prehistoric era so that they can see the dinosaurs, learn to make fire, and see an unpolluted environment.

20.  Topic:A time in history that you would like to visit A student writes: I would love to visit ancient Greece to meet Socrates, the 1770s to see the American Revolution, and the 1960s to hang with the hippies.

21.  Topic:A good place to shop for bargains A student writes: I have found many free outfits in my brother’s bedroom closet—I just have to make sure that he’s left for work before the “shopping” begins!

22.  Topic:A good place to shop for bargains A student writes: I save my family money by shopping at the Dollar Store, Kmart, and Wal-Mart.

23.  Topic:A good place to shop for bargains A student writes: The restroom shelves at school are the best place to “purchase” textbooks. The selection is limited, but the prices are a steal!

24.  Topic:A reason to live or not to live to 100 years old A student writes: Old people smell bad, look like shriveled prunes, and hold up traffic by driving too slowly. No one in their right mind would want to live to be 100.

25.  Topic:A reason to live or not to live to 100 years old A student writes: Knowing that my spoiled, ungrateful son Kenny will have to change my soiled, stinky diaper is the most important reason I want to last until I am 100 years old.

26.  Topic:A reason to live or not to live to 100 years old A student writes: If I live past 90, I worry about bad health. I don’t want my bones to break like twigs, my lungs to wheeze when I breathe, or my friends to scream so that my bad ears can hear what they are saying.

27. Your first essay must tell a specific story that sells (convinces) your reader to think, behave, try, or buy as you recommend.

28. Topics for Paper #1 • Write a thesis statement (just one or two sentences) for eachtopic below: • A cleaning product that does (or does not) perform as advertised • The best restaurant to visit on a special occasion • A problem in my community that needs to be fixed • A college or high school class that taught me more than I expected

29. Advice for the First Prewriting Assignment • Review Writing Tip 1 for advice on writing a good thesis statement. • See the syllabus for the format guidelines!

30. So how should Iorganize the essay?

31. Know your organization options. • To meet the 500-word minimum requirement, many students write a five-paragraph essay. • The five-paragraph essays is a form, like a sonnet or a haiku, like a Big Mac or an Oreo cookie. • No professional writer uses the five-paragraph format. • The format is, however, an appropriate organization strategy for some college papers, including essays in this class.

32. The Five-Paragraph Essay The most important sentence is the thesis statement: Because of A, B, and C, X is so. Introduction Body paragraphs, one for each restriction in the thesis statement All about Point A from the thesis statement All about Point B from the thesis statement All about Point C from the thesis statement This paragraph must do more than restate the thesis statement. Conclusion

33. Whether you have five paragraphs—or seven or four—every essay has an introduction, a body, and a conclusion—or the beginning, the middle, and the end.

34. A good introduction does these things: • Contains at least5 to 8 sentences. • Has a clearand correctthesis statement. [Read Writing Tip 1.] • Uses an appropriate strategyto interest the reader. [Read Writing Tip 2.] • Makes a good first impression. [Read Writing Tip 5.]

35. Your homework includes writing two different introductions that lead up to the same thesis statement. Label which strategies from Writing Tip 2 you used, like this …

36. Good body paragraphs do these things: • Address the thesis statement. [Read Writing Tip 3.] • Contain specific detailand concrete language. [Read Writing Tip 4.] • Interest the reader with information that is freshand unique. • Use personal experiencerather than vague, boring generalizations.

37. Follow this formula for a foolproof conclusion: • Write a sentence that briefly restatesthe main ideaof your essay. • Write a sentence that summarizesthe firstbody paragraph. • Write a sentencethat summarizes the next body paragraph—and then the one after it, etc. • Cleverly, humorously, or thoughtfully conclude the essay.

38. So how will you grade my essay?

39. Know the scoring method. • Essays will receive an objectivegrade calculated with a score sheet. • Every student will be evaluated in the same manner and in the same areas. • For the maximum number of points, always read the score sheet carefully and know what you must do!

40. What do you want to see in the essay so that it gets the highestpossible grade?

41. Know the four areas that the score sheet will evaluate. • Organization • Coherence • Support • Sentence Correctness

42. To evaluate the organization, ask yourself these questions: • Do Iunderstandthe topic? • Have I kept the topic singular? • Does my essayremainon topic?

43. To evaluate the coherence, ask yourself these questions: • Have I used transitionsbetween paragraphs and between sentencesso that my ideas flow? • Have I used correcttransitions? • Have I avoided using the same transition over and over in an annoyingand repetitivemanner?

44. Transitions are like road signs that tell your reader where to turn. Ack!!!Where do I turn? Where’s my exit?Which way do I go?Where the bejeebus am I !?!

45. To evaluate the support, ask yourself these questions: • Is my support appropriatefor a general audience? • Have I used plenty of concrete languagethat puts specific picturesinto my grader’s head? • Is my support personal? Have I avoided writing about people and things in general?

46. To evaluate the sentence correctness, ask yourself these questions: • Do any errors indicate that the writer doesn’t understand the structure of a sentence? • Fragments • Comma splices or fused sentences • Subject-verb agreement problems • Verb tense errors • How many errors indicate the writer was too lazy to proofread?

47. So how many sentence errors are allowed? Five? Twenty-three? Fifty?

48. Having more than ten sentence errors in the first two paragraphs means that the essay starts at a low C!

49. Like Olympic judges, the score sheet does not count all four areas equally.

50. Organization and coherence—easy things to control—are not as impressive as good support and correct sentences.