Homework

ENGLISH CLASSES 

SENIORS 

As you know, the Senior Curriculum is designed to encourage continued 
self-realization through reading and writing.  To this end, we will begin 
the "writing year" with a Personal Essay rather than a Critical one.  For 
the past few years, National Public Radio has been encouraging its listeners 
to submit essays which reveal what the writer believes.  These are wonderful 
pieces, fascinating to read. They are also pretty good examples of the kind 
of experiences that Personal Essays deal with.  Even though I will provide 
you with several examples of these essays in class, I urge you to read a few 
more on-line at NPR.ORG.  It will be a good preparation for your first 
writing assignment, the "This I Believe" essay.  In addition...below the 
Junior Assignment is an article on the Personal Narrative Essay.  Reading it 
may also refresh your memory on how to write this sort of essay.

Juniors:

Your first essay is a Personal Narrative Essay.  We went over the basics in 
the classroom:  format and content.  I encourage you to email me as soon as 
you can in order to begin a process that will end with a powerful piece of 
writing.

The following is an article on the Personal Narrative Essay, taken from 
ncnc.essortment.com.  It may be helpful as you begin to write your essay.


Writing narrative personal essays

There is no mystery in writing a personal narrative essays if you follow 
these easy steps.


 
There is very little mystery to writing the personal narrative essay. There 
is no proper topic for such 
an essay. An essay can be about a variety of personal experiences. You, the 
writer, have the right to 
say what you want about your personal experience. You can write about 
anything -- Aunt Sally, the 
funky necklace you bought at a garage sale, the harrowing experience of 
being stuck in an elevator, 
the best Christmas you ever had, the worst day of your life. No topic or 
subject is off-limits; 
therefore there are endless opportunities to write an essay about your 
personal, point-of-view of 
what happened. Often the reason behind wanting to write a personal essay is 
unclear. Once the 
writing begins and the events are recorded and recounted it becomes clear 
that the writer is 
searching to find the meaning, the universal truth, the lesson learned from 
the experience. When 
writing, rewriting and good editing coalesce, a personal narrative essay 
becomes a beautiful thing. It 
shows how the past or a memory’s significance affects the present or even 
the future.

We all have stories to tell. But facing a blank page is intimidating. 
Knowing where to begin becomes 
a real dilemma. A good place to start is with the word I. Write I was, I 
saw, I did, I went, I cried, I 
screamed, I took for granted. I is an empowering word. Once you write it on 
the page it empowers 
you to tell your story. That’s exactly what you are going to do next. Tell 
the story. Get it all out. 
Don’t worry about how many times I appears in the text. Don’t worry how 
scattered and unfocused 
thoughts are. Write however your mind tells you to write. This style is 
often called freewheeling 
writing or stream of consciousness. Once the story is all down on paper you 
will go back and begin 
to shape the essay into a form that says exactly what you want it to say 
about your experience. If 
you’re discouraged over what you’ve written, back away from it. Let it rest. 
Take a walk. Do 
something that distracts your mind from writing the essay. Many writers find 
that even while doing 
something other than writing, their writing mind continues to work out what 
needs to be said and 
continues to uncover the multi-layered associations and voices of what 
they’re writing about.


Personal narrative essays are essentially non-fiction stories, ones that are 
neatly arranged like a road 
map that take the reader from point A to point B to point C. In life, and in 
our own personal 
experience, things aren’t so straightforward as A-B-C. Characters, facts, 
places, conversations and 
reporting what happened, where you went, what you saw and what you did isn’t 
always so neatly 
pulled together. That is your job, as the writer, to pull together all the 
elements so they bring the 
reader to the universal truth, the lesson learned or insight gained in your 
experience. How do you do 
this? Through re-writing and re-writing.

Each time you redo the story more will be revealed to you. You will get “in 
touch” with the universal 
truth. Every rewrite of the story will lead you to the aha! Once you get the 
aha! the next rewrite will 
show dramatic improvement. You will be able to arrange events into a 
chronological sequence that 
best suits the aha!. When you know the aha! create events, think up examples 
to better illustrate the 
theme of your essay. Use the senses when describing anything. Example, …It 
was a stellar day. The 
air had a salty tang to it as it blew off the ocean. Little white caps broke 
not more than twenty feet 
out then rushed to meet the shore. Above me sea gulls screeched and circled 
in a cloudless blue sky. 
The sun was in its Spring zenith…. The more descriptive language you use, 
the more you will place 
the reader right there in the experience with you. Colorful or hard-driving 
language are the tools of 
the essayist.

Essay writing forces you to shape your experience until it can be fully 
understood by others. Use 
every tool available in the writing craft. Construct dialogue, use metaphors 
but most importantly, use 
language with a wide breadth of sensory detail. If you find yourself getting 
lost, stop writing. Start 
reading other essays. Every issue of Reader’s Digest always has at least 
two. Read eight back issues 
of a magazine with personal narrative essays in their content. By osmosis, 
you’ll get the feel of how 
essays are constructed. Go back and do the rework on yours. Include 
dialogue, include examples that 
best support or illustrate the aha! of the experience you’re writing about. 
Beef up the description of a 
character. Give them succinct, meaningful dialogue that pushes the reader 
closer and closer to the 
aha! of your essay.

The next step is to get feedback on what you have written. If someone close 
to you or someone 
really intimate with the experience you’ve written about says, “Hey, that’s 
not the way it happened,” 
don’t worry. Little white lies are serving to drive the aha! of the 
experience into the mind of the 
reader. Your truth is embedded in your writing. To enable the reader to 
visualize or grasp the 
concept, little white lies are a necessity. Listen to the responses of 
readers, then go back a rewrite 
the portions that were unclear to the reader.

Next, have someone read the essay aloud to you or you read it aloud into a 
tape recorder.

Listen to the flow of words. Listen to where the reader stumbles. Listen 
where pauses fall. Listen to 
where the reader runs out of breath. These are all clues as to where more 
refining or tweaking need 
to be done. Go back and do it! You are close to sitting back in the chair 
and saying, “Yes! This is 
exactly what I wanted to say about what I experienced.” It is a beautiful 
feeling. Work to achieve it.

To recap how to write a personal narrative essay follow these points:

·Write I on a blank page.

·Tell the story as it flows from your mind.

·Let the story rest in its scattered, unfocused form.

·Begin rewriting. Shaping events in a way to best suit what you want to say.

·Rejoice when the aha! of your experience is revealed.

·Re-write, re-write, and re-write. Little white lies are okay.

·Use language that is full of words that tap into the senses.

·Get feedback from a reader.

·Re-write.

·Have the essay read aloud. Listen.

·Fine tune and tweak.

·Grin from ear-to-ear when everything on the page reveals the aha! in the 
experience perfectly.

·And – Kudos on a job well done!


This information has been reprinted from 
http://ncnc.essortment.com/personalnarra_rucu.htm


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