WRITING PROJECT 1: The Personal Narrative

WRITING PROJECT 1: The Personal Narrative
Please note that the due dates below may change depending on the progress of the class.
Length
At least 4 full pages (double-spaced, 12-point font, 1-inch margins) or 1,200 words
Due Dates
● First two pages (peer review draft): Sun, Jan. 23 @ 11.59 pm on BB and in class the
following day as a printout or on your laptop or tablet (smartphones won’t count)
● First complete draft: Sun, Jan. 30 @ 11.59 pm on BB
● Final draft: Tue, Feb. 8 @ 11.59 pm on BB
Core Resources
● WP1 sample paper on BB
● San José State University Writing Center, “Personal Narrative Essays”
Genre
Personal narrative essays have become a common part of college applications, so you may
have already mastered the genre. They tell a story about yourself. Writers choose subjects for
their stories from the most interesting and/or insightful moments of their lives: something
that bothered or challenged them before they were able to gain important insights into their
lives.
Assignment
The personal narrative that you will write will deal with a period in high school (or middle
school) — or the last couple of years of your life — when a current event and/or activist/political
concern became an important topic in class or in your peer group. It’s not hard to think about
examples: be it COVID, climate change, or racial justice protests, the stuff that’s often on the
news frequently finds its way into the classroom these days. Now tell a story about how one
such issue has involved and affected you. Did you attend a protest against climate change or
police-involved shootings? Describe the protest, what people attended, and what you learned
from it. Perhaps you didn’t attend a protest, but the topic once came up in a conversation with
friends or in class. You may have had to write a paper about it. Describe the process vividly of
how you began thinking about the topic and where you ended up in your thinking. What and
who influenced you and why? The possibilities are endless. But please note: As an instructor, I
do not expect that you conform to any one political viewpoint. You may have been the sole
person in your class or peer group to have thought differently from the rest. That’s especially
interesting and great stuff for a personal narrative, as well.
Grading rubrics
● Content: 40%
○ The final draft tells a successful story full of vivid examples built around a
central theme or conflict and moves from its interesting introduction through
to some sort of insight: it may be a resolution, an epiphany (i.e. a closing insight
that you’ve gathered from experiencing this part of your life). Clarity is key:
Your readers need to be able to follow you through every stage of the story.
They need to understand the conflict, the characters involved, the story as it’s
told. Vivid examples may include descriptions of events and moments that
make them “come to life” for your readers as well as interesting quotes from the
involved persons.
● Organization: 25%
○ The narrative guides your readers logically from the beginning, which clearly
establishes the theme/conflict, through the development of the story (often in
chronological order of events), toward some resolution in the end that ties all
issues and problems raised in the story together. Sentences have clear
relationships with their surrounding sentences, as do the paragraphs with their
surrounding paragraphs.
● Grammar, orthography, and style: 25%
○ The final draft uses clear and concise sentences that have a clear relationship
between their subjects and verb predicates. Sentence boundaries are clearly
marked (i.e. fragments and run-ons are avoided). Spelling errors, especially ones
that stem from obvious laziness to proofread, will cost points as well.
● Layout and formatting: 10%
○ The final draft follows the formatting guidelines set out above under “Length”
and in the WP1 sample paper. The latter includes adding your full name to the
top of the first page as well as the course title, my name, the date of the final
submission, and a running header on all pages that includes your last name and
the page number.
Possible Penalties (will be taken off from grade of final draft)
1. No 2-page draft: – 2.5 points
2. No first full draft: – 3.5 points
3. No final draft: automatic F
4. 2.5 points will be deducted per each half page that the final draft comes short of the
minimum page count
Learning outcomes
After submitting this WP, you will be able to
● write concise sentences that avoid common grammar mistakes.
● provide meaningful peer feedback on your classmates’ drafts.
● meet deadlines.
● provide visually appropriate layout of a word processing document.
● SLOs covered: #5 & 6.