Personal Writing Papers (6% in total)

(There are three Personal Writing Papers worth 2% each)

TURNITIN.COM SUBMISSIONS REQUIRED, TEN (10) MINUTES OR MORE PRIOR TO BEGINNING OF CLASS ON OR BEFORE THE DUE DATE, AFTER WHICH THE PAPERS WILL LOSE 5% PER CALENDAR DAY LATE, PER LATE WORK POLICIES ON THE COURSE SYLLABUS.

General guidelines:

• Personal Writing Papers are certainly very simple and short assignments, and they should be written in a rather casual prose style, for they are meant to help students to develop their prose style in their own personal voice (more about this under “Grading Criteria).
• They are two paragraphs long, and the length of the paper in total should be between a minimum of 100 words to a maximum of 150 words.
• To make certain your word count is correct (in MS Word) you can click on “Tools” and then click on “word count.
• Use the formatting guidelines established during class lectures.
• The assigned text will always be accessed from the Web by clicking on the appropriate link from the “Assignment Calendar” section of the course syllabus.

Prompt:

• I simply want your thoughts on the assigned reading/video (hereafter referred to simply as “the text”), which might take the form of addressing one or more of the following:

1. If the text is about a newly emerging technology, you could explain the potential benefits and/or drawbacks.
2. If the text is about a topical issue, you could explain the potential benefits and/or drawbacks.

• The above list is just an example of an approach to this assignment. If you have other thoughts then feel free to take a different approach.

Grading Criteria:

• The total number of words in your two paragraphs must be 100 to 150 words.
• Use a document header, as you should for all assignments.
• Use a two-part title separated by a colon, neither part of which should contain the name of the assignment, nor should it contain part or all of the name of the poem.
• The formatting guidelines on the syllabus/class lectures must be observed.
• The paper should be two paragraphs long.
• Writing must be free—or predominantly free—of typos, awkward/unclear phrasing, and sentence level errors.
• Contractions are allowed.
• First person pronouns such as “I” “me” “my” are allowed.
• Second person pronouns such as “you” “your” “yours” are allowed.
• You may engage in personal stories, meaning stories of your own life experiences, or the experiences of friends, family, and so on.
• You may begin sentences with conjunctions: but, and, or, nor, for, so, yet.
• You may pose questions in these assignments.
• You may engage in forms of direct address to the reader, such as "think about the fact that . . ."
• You may use a casual or relaxed prose style, which might include sentences that begin with words like "well, sure, now, yes, no."
• You may use the phrase “a lot.”
• Because Personal Writing Papers are so short, do not quote more than a very brief line or two, if anything at all, from of the assigned reading.
• Although the objective of these papers is to find your own personal voice as a writer, do not make the mistake of assuming that grammatical errors are acceptable. Do not engage in sentence fragments, run-ons, misuse of capitalization, punctuation, or other types of sentence-level errors. The upshot is that even though these assignments are written in rather casual prose, do not mistake these guidelines for a license to write these papers as though they are text messages.

Some Important Points:

• Your writing, were it to be read aloud, should sound like a verbal conversation between friends, which means it has an informal and relaxed tone. Still, temper this against the final bullet point above, which is under “Grading Criteria.”
• Engage the Assignment Calendar section of the course syllabus for due dates and the texts over which you will write these papers.

How to turn in these papers: a paper copy is due during class on the due date. Additionally, an electronic copy is due, ten (10) minutes or more prior to the beginning of class on or before the due date, after which the paper will lose 5% per calendar day late, per late work policies on the course syllabus; it must be turned in to TurnItIn.com as a MS Word doc or docx file. Use the TurnItIn.com “file upload” method on the submit screen. You will be instructed during class about how to create a TurnItIn.com account, and how to turn in your work. Your essays will be considered late until both the paper copy and the electronic copies are turned in. All other rules for late work, as delineated in section six of the course syllabus, also apply. Moreover, your electronic turn-in must be an exact duplicate of the paper copy. In other words, no further corrections or revisions will be accepted. Also, if the electronic and paper copies do not match up it will have a negative impact on the assignment’s grade.

TURNITIN.COM SUBMISSIONS REQUIRED, TEN (10) MINUTES OR MORE PRIOR TO BEGINNING OF CLASS ON OR BEFORE THE DUE DATE, AFTER WHICH THE PAPERS WILL LOSE 5% PER CALENDAR DAY LATE, PER LATE WORK POLICIES ON THE COURSE SYLLABUS.