Assignment—Draft, revise, and edit your text to produce a well-organized essay of at
least 250 words and not more than 500 in response to the following prompt:
Your growth as a writer depends on how well you understand what you do when you write so that you can build on good habits. Reflect on some of the following questions to help you see the process that led to the creation of your essays this semester and find ways to continue improving your writing process in the future. Focus on questions that lead to significant or useful ideas that will help you in the future. Your essay should refer to specific examples from one or more of the three essays you wrote this semester.
• How would you tell the story of your thinking? Did your views on any topic change during your writing process?
• At some point in your writing, did have to choose between two or more alternatives, such as sources, organization, or different ways to begin an essay? What were they, and how did you choose?
• What was the most difficult problem you faced while writing? How did you go about trying to solve it?
• Whose advice did you seek while researching, organizing, drafting, revising, and editing? What advice did you take, and what did you ignore? Why?
Present your essay in MLA format. You are not required to use sources other than your essays, but if you choose to use sources you should include correct in-text citations and a Works Cited page.
Purpose—Why are we writing this assignment? What does it matter? As the editors of our textbook, The Norton Field Guide to Writing, have observed, “All academic writing is part of a larger conversation” to which you are “adding your own voice.” The process of drafting, peer reviewing, revising, and editing your response to this assignment will help you learn how to consider your own writing processes to discover what works best for you as you add your voice to conversations.
Skills—This assignment requires you to practice the skill of academic self-analysis. Checklist—To earn a “C” or better on the assignment, be sure to do the following
things:
• Write at least 250 words and not more than 500.
• Use MLA format throughout your essay.
• Give your essay an interesting and original title.
• Begin with an introduction paragraph that communicates the focus of your essay.
• State an assertive, insightful, and responsive thesis in the last sentence of your
introduction.
• Begin each body paragraph with a topic sentence that supports the thesis and that
organizes the sentences which come after it in the paragraph.
• Throughout your reflection, refer to specific examples from your writing projects
this semester.
• If you use sources other than your essays, include MLA documentation. Note that
an essay with missing or incorrect MLA documentation may not earn a passing
grade.
• Proofread your essay. Reread it to find any fragments, run-ons, subject/verb agreement errors, misspellings, or incorrect punctuation. Note that an essay with numerous errors in grammar may not earn a passing grade.
