Post Test B: Writing an Academic Essay

Length: 2-4 pages
Due: Date of Final exam, 2002

Your final assignment for this unit is to write a short essay describing and analyzing what you have learned from this writing class and what areas you would like to continue working on in English 120. For this paper, you’ll need to make a claim about your learning experiences in this course and/or the issues you would like to focus on in a future writing class. Then, you'll support that claim with details about your observations, experiences, and /or things you’ve read and heard. Be sure to take the time to adequately think through and develop this essay—it counts for 5% of your grade in the course.

Purpose This paper will serve several purposes:

• it gives me a chance to compare your academic writing at the beginning of the semester to your writing now—this is a way of testing me, as well as a way of testing you.
• it gives you a chance to think about what you may have learned and how you might want to structure your learning in the future.
• it provides you with an opportunity to think about the ways writing instruction has or has not worked for you, why it has worked or not worked, and how you can use that information to improve outcomes in your future courses.

Audience Some things you should know about me (I’m your audience for this assignment) are:

• I am truly interested in your experiences as a writer/writing student and I want to be able to shape this course to meet the needs of first year students—translation—I’m interested in your feedback.
• While I hope to see that your work as a writer has improved, if it has not, I need to know that.
• I do care about things that show you think logically—like focus your paper and develop your points with concrete examples.

Planning and Drafting As you begin working on your paper, you will want to:

1. Do a quick pre-writing focusing on what you liked/disliked about this class. What sorts of assignments and projects worked for you? Which ones did not? Then think about what you liked/disliked about writing instruction (the way I structured the course). How are these connected? Or not? You may find that you actually like writing, but hate being forced to do it. Or the opposite?
2. You may wish to look at the very first paper you wrote in this class and respond to the issues you raised in that.
3. List responses: What were your concerns about this class? How were these concerns connected to other experiences you've had with writing? With writing teachers? (Be specific—jot down a few examples.) Were your concerns legitimate? Had you initially correctly analyzed your strengths and weaknesses?
4. Once you have notes, focus your short paper on a single, arguable point.
5. Develop your argument with specific examples and support: from your own experience, your past reading, your observations of other students struggling with the same issues.

Evaluation Criteria Paper:

• engages your reader with an interesting, focused discussion of some aspect of the topic.
• demonstrates a knowledge of basic organizational techniques: forecasts, topic sentences, transitions. (Should we talk a little about this?)
• employs specific examples to elaborate on assertions. (From the prewriting you've done.)
• attempts to use language in ways that are interesting (show your personality).
• shows concern for proofreading: spell check, careful editing, interest in grammatical correctness.

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