Portfolio assignments

As its name implies, the memoir is rooted in the writer’s own lived experience, his or her memories and observations. The memoir, or personal essay, may focus on a significant event in your life, a meaningful relationship, an important object or place, or some pattern, thread, or theme that weaves through your life. The tricky part about this particular version of the memoir assignment, though, is that you’ll need to choose a part of your life that connects to your chosen theme.

BRAINSTORM: Spend a good deal of time meditating on a germ, kernel, core for this essay. Think about all of the different ways that this theme has played out in your life, the objects and activities and people and events that in some way connect to this theme. For example, if I had chosen business as my theme, I could write about any one of several jobs I’ve held: working in the dish room in college and what it taught me about the satisfactions of manual labor, the challenges of strategy in what may seem like mindless work; working at the salad factory one summer, when I sometimes spent eight hours boiling and peeling eggs and learning the social conventions of the break room; later in my adulthood working as an at-home freelance editor and the difficulties of balancing work and motherhood.  Or I could write about family finances, contrasting my mother’s penciled monthly budgets with my own more “amorphous” accounting methods or how the allowance question was handled when I was a child vs. now that I’m a parent. Or, as a third alternative, I could write about myself as a shopper; since books are my most important purchase, I could explore how my book-buying experience has changed through the decades. We will be spending time in class discussing options and, hopefully, inspiring each other. Once you decide on a topic, collect up some details, and think about how you can narrow it down enough so that you have room to make your experience come to life through some of those details.

DRAFT: In your rough draft, concentrate on getting down the details of the experience (or person, place, thing, idea). Your task is much like a fiction writer’s: to capture lived experience in concrete detail, so that your reader feels almost as if he or she is living it as well. Describe setting, develop character (dialogue is often a particularly good way to do this). Write not a hazy, hasty pencil sketch of an idea, but rather fill in your picture with detail and color.

FOCUS: As you are writing (maybe before or after as well) think about the “point” of this essay. Think about your reader. How does your experience connect to something more universal, to something your reader may have experienced or care about. What are you finally trying to say about this hacked-off corner of your experience? How do you view this experience from your present-day viewpoint? You may not have a neat little lesson to impart, but your sense of the meaning of the experience should have clarified at least a little in the writing.

REVISION: See the revision section under the Writing tab for some info about revising, editing, and proofreading.

GRADING CRITERIA: I will evaluate your essays on the basis of

• the sharpness of the details you use to evoke experience
• the thoughtfulness with which you reflect on the experience
• the grace of your language
• the mechanical correctness of your prose (for this essay focus in particular on avoiding sentence boundary errors).

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Essay 2: Text-wrestling

Writing connects, to our own memories and experiences, to the people who become our readers, and to the other texts that give us information and inspiration. Being able to connect and respond to the writing of others is a crucial skill, both in academic and “real-world” settings.

READ: First access and print out the article from the course blog. Scan the article first, then read with your favorite pen in hand, marking important points the author makes, places you agree or disagree, questions you’d like to ask him about what he’s saying or why, personal experiences you’ve had that connect to his ideas, observations you’ve made of your friends, family, society that relate, counterarguments that spring to your mind. You may wish to underline sentences, but also try to write your own words in the margins. What seems to be his main point? What evidence or examples does he use? Look at how the article is structured. What are its main parts and how do they connect to each other?

SUMMARIZE: Using the notes you have made in the margins, try to write a 350- or 400- word (or so) summary of the article, including the author’s main point and evidence, his purpose and intended audience (as close as you can guess). The general format of an academic summary usually begins something like this:

In <title of text>, <author’s full name> <verb expressing purpose of writing> that <main point> <something about structure, method, evidence used>.

For example,

In “The Internet and U,” Sarah Gordon argues that prolonged exposure to Internet chatrooms results in diminished literacy skills as shown by her groundbreaking study following fifty adolescents throughout middle and high school.

Points to remember:

• Be sure to include the author’s full name and the title of the work summarized. In order to remind your reader that you are summarizing someone else’s ideas, mention the author by name throughout the summary (after the first time use only the author’s last name).
• It is conventional to use the present tense (“the author argues” not “the author argued”) in referring to the text.
• You may wish to use several quotations in your summary, either because you want/need both the author’s ideas and his/her words or you wish to convey something of the author’s style. Do not overdo it with quotations. Two or three are plenty in a 400-word summary, and they should probably not be longer than a sentence apiece
• Be sure to use quotation marks and copy the author’s words exactly. For this assignment you do not need to use parenthetical notation since the source will be clear.
• For the rest of the summary, when you are not using direct quotations, be sure to use both your own words and sentence structures.

[…possibilities for response]

Now, with these musings percolating in your brain, imagine entering into a dialogue with the author. Look over the marginal notes you have made. How would you connect or extend or contradict or question or analyze or complicate or qualify or applaud (or probably several dozen other possible responses) what you have read? You must also find and use at least one other source as part of your response. That source may help in answering a question that the original article raises for you, or it may help to bolster your agreement or disagreement with the text. Make sure your source is relevant, credible, and up-to-date.

DRAFT: Now sit down (tie yourself to a chair, if necessary) and write a three-page (or so) essay that both summarizes and responds to the article. Instead of just jumping into your summary, begin your essay with a general paragraph that introduces the issue involved. You may want to use some facts you’ve learned from the article or some personal experience  (real or hypothetical) that ties to the topic. Your second paragraph will probably bein the summary, which may take several paragraphs to complete. In your first draft you may wish to keep the summary and response as separate sections, or you may choose to alternate back and forth. In either case, make sure your reader can tell which points are the author’s and which are yours. The due date for the rough draft is indicated on the course blog/syllabus.

Be sure to include in-text citations and a Works Cited page that lists both the text I gave you and the one you found.

REVISE: In revision, pay particular attention to your paragraph structure. It is often a helpful strategy to outline your first draft, particularly if you compose without too much of a plan ahead of time, in order to see the main points you have made. Make sure you can list the main “chunks” of your response; then check to see that your paragraphing corresponds. Consider the best order for these chunks. Does one idea logically follow and develop another? Is there any time sequence to follow? If you have several reasons for your position, remember that the beginnings and endings (of sentences, paragraphs, and essays) are positions of emphasis.

CRITERIA FOR GRADING:

• How accurately and completely you’ve summarized the article
• How deeply you’ve considered your response
• How well you’ve developed that response through specifics
• How carefully you’ve structured your paragraphs (each paragraph = one main idea)
• How accurately you’ve used MLA guidelines to cite sources.

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Essay 3: Argument

For this project you will either investigate a controversial issue connected to your theme for the course in order to take a position or identify a problem in order to propose a solution. This essay will be linked to another assignment, a photo essay that will enrich the argument by providing supplementary information that may explain or expand or connect in some other way to the arguable issue. You may write the two essays in whichever order you prefer.

BRAINSTORM: Spend some time to find an issue that you are truly curious about. Consider your various “spheres” of your life (school work, family, community) to find issues about which people disagree. What are the problems you see in these areas of your life (and what might you propose as solutions)? Or think about your own interests, and locate the open questions in those fields. Browse through the Opposing Viewpoints database, or the New York Times Room for Debate section, or a site like Arts and Letters Daily, which gives links to interesting online content, or the Sunday newspaper, or magazines in your fields of interest. I encourage you to look for an open question for which you do not already have an answer. Decide on a question that is truly arguable, for which different, reasonable people might take different positions. Make sure your issue is narrow enough that it can be treated in a short essay.

FIND SOME SOURCES: Look for information about your research question, remembering to rely not just on search engines but also the library’s databases and book collection. You will need at least four credible sources; at least two of these must either be in print or have originally appeared in print. (You cannot use four websites, no matter how credible they appear. Note that Wikipedia is not an acceptable source for college-level research.)

COMPILE A TENTATIVE WORKS CITED PAGE: List your sources in MLA format. Be sure to consider the credibility of the sources you choose to use. How can you tell it’s reliable info? Look at where and when the source was published, the credentials of the author, the objectivity of the organization involved. Look for sources that are “meaty,” with lots of useful information.

ORGANIZE YOUR ARGUMENT: The core of this project will be your argumentative essay. Once you’ve digested the information in your sources, decide on your position on the issue. Free-write or bullet point the reasons you hold this position. What details could you use to support or develop or explain those reasons? Write a tentative thesis statement that gives your claim along with the strongest several reasons you have come up with. (For example, “The invention of the microwave oven has damaged civilization by weakening the institution of the family dinner table, encouraging us to expect instant gratification, and loosening the ties to our ethnic heritages.”)

DRAFT: The target length of your essay should be about three pages (or 1000 words). Focus on a clear structure, and make sure your reasons are supported by evidence from your sources, cited according to MLA guidelines.

CRITERIA FOR GRADING:

• a strong thesis statement makes an arguable claim
• focused, unified, and coherent paragraphs that give a logical framework for your argument
• quality of your sources
• use of specific details to provide evidence for your reasons
• proper MLA documentation

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Essay 4: Photo essay

For this essay you will put together a sequence of from six to eight photographs (or other sorts of images) that tie in some way to your argument paper (Essay 4). The photos may work with the argument in a variety of ways: to give a historical context, to provide background material useful for understanding your argument, to illustrate the causes or effects related to your arguable issue, to generalize a local issue you’ve tackled in the argument or to localize some more widespread issue, or some other connection of your own devising.  You may find these photos online, or I’d love to see at least a few of you take and upload your own photographs (or you may use some combination of found and personally shot photos).

In writing the captions for this essay, you may want to incorporate research, or you may write from draw from another genre if appropriate (for example, memoir, instructions, or visual analysis).

Deciding on a topic. See the argument assignment for suggestions of places to look for arguable issues. Make sure that you’ve come up with a topic that can lend itself both to argument and to some sort of visual representation. Your photo essay need not be argumentative in itself, however; it may be expository (explanatory) or illustrative.

Finding pictures. Decide whether you will take your own pictures or search for them online. Here is a link to a good list of sites of photographic archives that are in the public domain (and thus can be ethically used); if you use a google image search or a social networking site such as flickr, make sure to pay attention to the permissions required for image use.

Researching relevant info for captions. If you have chosen an approach that requires research, look for useful sources; you may re-use some of the sources you used for your argument.

Writing captions and putting everything together. For each photo, write a paragraph-sized caption, remembering to use in-text citations for any information taken from your sources (summary, paraphrase, or quotation). You may use MS Word to put your essay together (one picture per page, or you may use Powerpoint. (Other options are possible, but check with me to make sure I’ll be able to open the file formats.)

Don’t forget to include a Works Cited page, which lists your research sources as well as any photos that you didn’t take yourself.

INFO ON CITING PHOTOGRAPHS

In-text citation for photos. To indicate the sources for your photographs within your essay itself, please use italic font, 10 pt text, below the photo itself, to give this information:

Title of the photograph/image (photographer’s name or artist)

or if this info is not available

Title of photograph/image (Source–e.g., Library of Congress, National Archives, or web site title)

Info on citing photos retrieved from online (from Purdue OWL):

An Image (Including a Painting, Sculpture, or Photograph)

Provide the artist’s name, the work of art italicized, the date of creation, the institution and city where the work is housed. Follow this initial entry with the name of the Website in italics, the medium of publication, and the date of access.

Goya, Francisco. The Family of Charles IV. 1800. Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid. Museo National del Prado. Web. 22 May 2006.

Klee, Paul. Twittering Machine. 1922. Museum of Modern Art, New York. The Artchive. Web. 22 May 2006.

If the work cited is available on the web only, then provide the name of the artist, the title of the work, and then follow the citation format for a website. If the work is posted via a username, use that username for the author.