Writing assignment

For one of the writing assignments, I would like my students to use their personal experience to develop an argument. I think this essay will contain three parts. In the first part, they just narrate their own experience. It can be an event in the past, an important moment in the life, or first-hand experience. The second part will involve analyzing that personal experience. For example, why they think that event is important to them or what they learn from certain experiences. The third part is the most difficult one. Students have to situate their personal experience in a social context and explore one social issue. For example, a student may talk about her part-time job experience in the first part, and then she analyzes why she thinks she is being paid unfairly, and in the last part, she examines the social issue of the minimum wage. This will not be the first assignment, but probably the second or third one because the last part of the essay requires much effort (for example, finding outside resources) and involves critical analysis.

    I think the challenge I will face is how I explain this assignment (in my assignment sheet) in a very concrete and detailed way. Also, how I grade this kind of paper. Should the analyzing parts weigh more? I found that Rachel and Jonas describe very clearly and concretely in their assignment sheets what students should write and how they can achieve certain goals in the essay. They even write down what specific part of the essay will be graded (for example, citation). I think I have to think thoroughly before I make assignment sheets. For example, should I restrict the number of outside resources? Should I use several concrete examples to show how this assignment can be done? Should I also give them some essay questions to stimulate thoughts and make sure that they answer those questions in the essay? I hope that my assignment sheets can be as clear as possible but I don’t want to list a lot of rules that constrain students’ writing. So, I’ll need to think about how to construct my assignment sheets and what I should include in those assignment sheets.