Personal Essay

This task requires you to create a personal essay.  The purpose of this essay is to use the text you have studied to support your ideas regarding some of the guiding questions.

Objectives

You will be able to
- recognize writing as a process of constructing meaning for self and others
- use what is known as the writing process
- use appropriate pre-writing and planning strategies
- develop ideas previously explored into draft form
- revise and polish compositions
- share, present, or publish compositions
- write introductions that engage interest, focus the thoughts of the readers, and establish the mood and tone of compositions
- demonstrate the ability to trace a coherent thought pattern to a suitable conclusion
- write conclusions appropriate to the overall intent
- analyze and evaluate their own and others' writing for ideas, organization, sentence clarity, word choice, and mechanics
- assess compositions for unity, coherence, and emphasis
- confer with peers and teachers

Teaching-Learning Strategies

you begin drafting, you need to go through the stage of pre-writing and spend some time reviewing writing techniques.

To organize your ideas, use the outline(.doc) or (.rtf) provided and follow these steps:

1. Choose the subtheme that interested you the most.

2. Select the guiding questions you would like to answer from that subtheme.

3. For each question, write down your own answer.

4. Find the texts that support your own answer to the questions you have chosen.

Each guiding question that you choose could be the idea for one of your body paragraphs.

It is important to review the details of writing a proper personal essay before the you begin. Here is a list of topics that you should have some experience in, but may need a refresher on before you begin this assignment.

1. Review the writing process.

2. Review the steps for writing a five-paragraph essay.

3. Review writing a good introductory paragraph, as well as a good conclusion. These can be the most difficult parts of writing an essay.

4. Review the differences between a formal essay and a personal/informal essay. For example, it is important to note that this is a personal essay, so you may use the pronoun 'I' in order to share your thoughts, opinions, or feelings.

the drafting process, it is important to simply put your ideas down on paper.  There will be an opportunity for revising and editing at a later time.

Once you have completed your outline, you will be given time to draft. At this point, you will be working on your own, but you may need to consult your teacher or the links above regarding any questions you have on format, introductory sentences, paragraph structure, concluding paragraphs, or any other common problems you may struggle with when beginning your essay.

drafting, you should complete the writing process and hand-in a good copy of your essay.

Be sure to complete the following steps:

1. Read your essay to yourself to make sure each of your ideas and body paragraphs relates to the thesis.
2. Peer-edit a classmates essay using the peer editing checklist(.doc) or (.rtf) provided
3. Make changes based on your own corrections and your peer-editor's ideas
4. Create a good copy of your essay and hand it in to the teacher

The following evaluation guide (.doc) or (.rtf) is an example of how you may be evaluated. It is from the Saskatchewan Curriculum Guide and is used when evaluators are marking departmental examinations.