The body of the essay draft must be 500 to 600 words in length (approximately two body pages), and it must have a title page. The essay must be formatted according to APA style as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center, located within the Learning Resources tab on the left navigation toolbar, in your online course.
Choose one of the following topics:
a. Draft a narrative about returning to school. You may explore the issues regarding why you decided to return to school, the benefits of obtaining a college degree, changes in your lifestyle required for you to pursue your degree, obstacles to successful completion of your degree program, strategies you will use to overcome these obstacles, or any other subject related to your educational pursuits.
b. Draft a narrative about a singular experience you have had within the last few years that strikes you as particularly significant and has changed the way you are or the way you think about things. Note: This essay should recount and examine one experience only (not several). Yes: The day your car broke down. No: The car troubles you have had all year.
For this essay, you should practice the strategies discussed in Chapters 3, 4, and 5 of Essentials of College Writing.
Before writing the draft, generate ideas for the paper by using one of the techniques discussed in Chapter 4, such as listing, preparing an outline or tree chart, brainstorming, free writing, mind mapping, or using the “Five W’s and an H” Questions. Remember that “story starters” are everywhere. Think about it—status updates on social media websites can be a good place to start. You may have already started a “note” on Facebook, and now is your chance to develop that idea into a full narrative. If you keep a journal or diary, a simple event may unfold into a more developed narrative. Simply said, your stories may be closer than you think! (Your notes or outline will not be submitted, as you have used the discussion forum to share your methods as you prepare your draft.)
As you write the draft, make sure you have a thesis statement that asserts your purpose for your narrative, a logical order (narrative often employs chronological order), and elements of effective narration. If you get stuck, review Chapter 5 for advice on writing a personal narrative and review the Steve Martin narrative. Note: Have you ever interrupted someone in the middle of telling a story and asked, “So, what’s your point?” If so, you understand the importance of the narrative thesis. Unlike an argumentative thesis, a narrative thesis argues the point of telling the story. A narrative thesis always makes the case for a story’s value or validity.
After writing the draft, proofread for grammatical, mechanical, and stylistic errors. For information about the 20 Common Writing Errors in composition courses, go the Ashford Writing Center (Chapter 6, Section 6.1) and then review Fixing Common Grammar Errors for advice on how to address those errors (Chapter 6, Section 6.6).
Word Range: 500-600
Estimated Time on Task: 4-6 hours
Note: Students may not use recycled versions of essays from PSY202 or any other previous courses. All work in this course must be original to the course.
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