Please compile your end-of-the-year portfolio in the following order. Each individual draft should be stapled separately. The entirety of all the drafts and reflections and writing prompts (aka your portfolio) should be bound with a large binder clip (please no folders, binders, envelopes, rubber bands, etc. — one simple binder clip will suffice).

1. Essay #3 — final draft Portfolio Piece
2. Essay #3, draft #1 with comments
3. Any material from the revision circuit that is not written on your draft
4. Dialogue with source
5. Writing prompts/exercises in response to your blog entries
6. Essay #2 — final draft Portfolio Piece
7. Essay #2, optional draft #2
8. Essay #2, draft #1 with comments
9. Response to your writing — use of sources — from (They Say/I Say)
10. Self evaluation — 1-2 double-spaced pages telling me how you think you’ve done in course and grading yourself. Explain why you feel that is the grade you should get.

You will be graded, in part, on substantial and thoughtful revisions, so be sure your final portfolio pieces have really evolved from the first draft you wrote. In addition, I will be looking at the inclusion of each of the required texts and how they’ve met the assignment guidelines, which generally include a central point or thesis; the evolution of that thesis; adequate support through example/evidence; and strong use of language, making for a readable essay.

3-5pp.
due: Wednesday 4/16

(E.g. Nickel and Dimed, “Virtual Gangstas Coming to a Suburban House Near You”, “The Empire of Images in Our World of Bodies”, “Essential Play”)

Your topic (taken from the blogging you’ve done this semester) must be a “thorny” one–one that is complex and for which there is no easy answer or solution. You should be able to see the value of arguments on various “sides” of the issue. Writing this essay should help you clarify your ideas on the issue and help you to recognize the difficulties involved in finding any stable answer(s). Do not select a thesis for which you believe you know the “truth” and have a “ready answer”; instead, allow your paper to be driven by inquiry. Ideas must be developed, explored, examined, analyzed, researched, and complex. You must try to construct fresh insight about the material studied.

In crafting the essay, pay careful attention to your narrative strategies (thinking about the texts we’ve read in class and the “moves” these authors have made):

* choices in narration–utilizing first or third person or mixed narration
* setting(s) as establishing a context for your essay
* incorporating research–finding material that both supports and tests your thinking
Required Sources (these are minimums)
–1 web-based source (another blog, online magazine, web page, etc.)
–2 scholarly journal articles
–1 book
* providing a clear sense of the intention and overall meaning of your piece while avoiding didacticism

That is your prompt for this essay.

Find (at least) one source (a “they say”) that has something to say about this film (or something to say about film in general that you can apply to a reading of this film). Introduce what your source says into your essay. Now you have an “I say” and a “they say.” (Use Part I of your text for suggestions and templates).

Argue your reading of the film with as much evidence as you can find, but also allow whatever “they say” to complicate and evolve your own thesis. (I find the template on pg. 8 to be a good one for this).

Refine your thesis based on your source(s), and provide evidence accounting for your refined thesis.

Conclude with the most evolved and precise version of your argument, as well as an overview of how you got from point A (reading A) to point B (reading B).

1. Essay #1 — final draft Portfolio Piece
2. Essay #1, draft #2 — all new language
3. Three writing prompts
4. Essay #1, draft #1 with comments

You will be graded, in part, on substantial and thoughtful revisions, so be sure your final portfolio pieces have really evolved from the first draft you wrote. In addition, I will be looking at the inclusion of each of the required texts and how they’ve met the assignment guidelines.

Second draft components:
• Start in the middle of a scene with action or description.
• Use all new language (One suggestion: start with a blank screen and paste one resonant sentence from draft one or from one of your writing prompts to the top of the screen; start there).
• Have a strong sense of place/setting
• Work in your character sketch from #2 above.
• Try the present tense for at least one scene.
• Don’t forget the insight and reflection into the significance of your story

You’ll be putting the final version of this essay together for the mid-term portfolio. This will require a careful process of sorting and selecting from drafts one and two. Your final version will be carefully crafted and edited to reflect your best work.

Writing prompts for personal narrative essay draft #2
These prompts are to guide you in generating new material for you second draft. Choose three and aim for a full page for each (your choice — to be handed in with your mid-term portfolio).

1) Setting
First write a new scene that is pure description of a place that’s important to your story. Where is your story taking place (a football field, a tattoo parlor, an ocean, a hospital room)? Take yourself out of this and pretend you’re behind a video camera and you’re filming this place. What do you see? What do you hear? What do you smell? What are the textures and colors? Work on evoking a very specific “scene” for your reader.

Skip a few lines and write another paragraph. Where is this place? What happens in this place? What’s your relationship with this place? Why is this place important?

2) Character sketch
First write a description of a person who is central to your place (a coach, a friend, a parent, a pet?). Take yourself out of this too. How would you describe this person to someone who doesn’t know them? What are their distinctive traits or characteristics? How would you recognize them in a crowd or at a distance? What objects do you associate with them?

Next, skip a few lines and write another paragraph. What’s your relationship with this person? What specific moments stand out for you when you think about this person? Why are they important to your personal narrative?

3) Indelible moments
Make a long list of important moments, images, and instances that come to mind when you think about your story. You’ve worked on this before, but add to it! Now choose three that you haven’t yet written about. Highlight them and for each one write a new “scene” in the present tense.

4) Use a couple of the prompts below to write a new paragraph:
• I know how to…
• I believe…
• I am a…
• Most people think_________________about (you or your topic), but what they don’t know is_______________________.
• I expected ____________________, but ____________________ happened.

5) Investigation and inquiry:
• Make a list of specific things that your readers wanted to know more about.
• Make a list of specific things that you want to explore further.
• Come up with three specific examples that weren’t in your first draft.
• Find three specific pieces of information that you couldn’t initially remember in retelling your story and ask a friend or family member for help in reconstructing that scene in your essay. Write them an e-mail or call them up on the phone!

6) Show; Don’t Tell:
Find moments in your first draft where you’ve written phrases like — “I love it” or “It’s the best” or “It’s indescribable.” Show your readers what you mean. Use simile, metaphor and strong images to describe the “indescribable.” Explain why you “love it” and show through clear example. Compare the “best” day of school or “best” event in your life to other “great” objects, moments, etc.

(assignment adapted from Professor Megan Fulwiler, College of St. Rose)

3-5 pages

due: Wednesay 2/6

(Examples (from class) of this type of narrative: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, “Love Letters”, “My Popeye, My Home”, “A Most Unlikely Influence”, “One Bad Apple” and “On Keeping a Notebook”)

Write an essay about an event and/or series of events that have occurred in your life. This piece should reflect on your experience(s) in order to connect with issues that speak to a wider audience. In other words, even though it is a personal essay, it still needs to have exigency, significance, purpose. Re-create this experience “in good faith.” Stay “true” to your memory, true to remembered speaking styles (if using dialogue), true to you and the reader (and/or anyone else involved in or with the story). Remember that the topic should be crucial (this is not a “what I did on my summer vacation” essay); always keep in mind your purpose. Your goal is to make at least some reader(s) care. In other words, your piece, though a story of sorts, must have a central idea, and your story is being used to illustrate that central idea.

Some possible ideas to draw upon include:

• A particularly meaningful incident or event

• A specific symbolic moment within a family’s history or personal relationship.

• A meaningful artifact (photograph, family heirloom, sentimental object or keepsake).

• A special or “sacred” place or meaningful journey.

Be vivid, detailed and descriptive in your prose; use dialogue when appropriate.

Note: In this type of writing, it might be better to allow the ideas and perspectives (what we call the central idea, “argument,” or “thesis” in expository writing) to emerge from the experience, rather than fitting an experience to meet the demands of a preconceived idea.