Personal Narrative Workshop: Essay 1 Guidelines

1. Welcome to De Anza!

2. Agenda • Essay 1: Personal Narrative • Don’t stress out about this essay. It is only 10% of your grade. If you follow the workshop rubric it will be almost impossible for you to get below a B-, and so the probable variation in your grade would be about 2% of your final grade.

3. Personal Narrative • Titles • Take a few minutes to write down a one-sentence version of your personal narrative.

4. Personal Narrative • Titles • Use a combination of some or all of the keywords from your description (one-sentence version of your story) to form your title. You can use additional words if necessary, but your title should be as short as possible.

5. Personal Narrative • Introductions • Your introduction should probably give some background about your life before the problem that you focused on in your narrative. • The background that you include in the introduction should naturally transition into the story about your problem.

6. Personal Narrative • Introductions • It is likely that you will need to delete the first one or two of your sentences. • If the first one or two of your sentences do not mention you then delete them and rewrite the next sentence so that it is an appropriate first sentence for your story or write a new first sentence that mentions you. • Let’s try to make some first sentences and introductions based on the one-sentence version of your story.

7. Personal Narrative • Checklist: • Double-check your introduction • Check your essay against the workshop rubric and review the comments from your workshop partner. • Proofread. It will be helpful if you can let someone else read your essay before I do. • Print out your essay. Staple the workshop checklist or the draft that you workshopped behind your final draft.

8. Homework • The final draft of your essay is due tomorrow. • See me if you need an extension. If you have not yet done the workshop then you need an extension. • I need to meet with Zhijun.