2018 Tuesday — The In-Class Essay

This is the most important project of the semester. It is worth twice the points of the other essays.

My “Basic Writing” students are writing a 5-paragraph essay explaining the Essence of a Meaningful Quality Essay by elaborating on the Writing Process, the Four Steps of Writing, and the Ingredients in an Essay. That’s basically the contents of their textbook.

I believe the material in their textbooks is so valuable that I require them to know it. They are not allowed to use their book nor their notes during this midterm writing project.

It’s also proof that they are doing the work themselves — mom is not writing it, their significant other is not, and they are not paying an essay writing company to do it for them.

How well they do on the project usually depends on their attitude, which is probably true of almost everything in life, and yes of course their practice and rehearsal helps significantly.

Every semester this project gets harder for students to do because students arrive to my course/classroom with less and less language ability and skill because text messaging is their first language and most students in a Basic Writing class don’t like to read. They want a degree, but they don’t seem to realize that a degree represents that they have completed lots of reading and lots of writing.

Rosie (& Mr. Fun ), aka Carol