The "Practical" Scholarship Essay (~pg length varies.)
OVERVIEW
|
The practical essay, is an essay about your life, your past, but you will be using this piece to "market" your life experience for the purposes of an actual transfer-based essay or scholarship. To be precise, any narrative is a story often organized by time sequences about a memorable experience from your life; it includes several components such as dialogue and description. The following pages and links should assist you in getting a better sense of what the narrative essay as a genre entails. PRACTICAL-SPECIFIC FOCUS: To add more focus and depth to the unit, I encourage you to focus on narratives that specifically engage transfer-level essays or scholarship essays. In other words, you will ACTUALLY be writing to a specific audience, one that might eventually let you into their university or one that might provide you with economic support. Of course, if you choose not to write towards these specific tasks, that's okay with me: Discuss your essay topic with me and proceed accordingly. (Not everything in life, after all, was meant to be PRACTICAL). In this essay, I would like you to focus on the development of description, especially through the use of objective, subjective and figurative description. I am also interested in you having a sense of "tension" or "conflict" in your work, because such tension helps to make the work more intriguing and compelling. |
| In this essay, students should ideally attempt to: | --Identify relevant financial aid / scholarship opportunities that are 'best fit' options for one's life; actually apply for those scholarships, writing essays that complete the application. --Recognize the merit of a past experience, to thereby produce a powerful moral that can explain the value of that experience. Adapt to your given audience, such that the narrative can be practically adapted towards a transfer or scholarship (in your future). --Produce vivid sensory descriptions—active, objective, subjective, figurative—so as to best illustrate the experience depicted. (if applicable) --Reproduce or imitate dialogue during the narrative so as to reflect the unique voices of the characters at work in the piece. (if applicable) |
| Chang-rae Lee, "Sea Urchin" |
| Amy Tan, "Fish Cheeks" |
| Grading Criteria | explains how I will grade this essay; |
| Brainstorming | explains a helpful way to start writing your essay; |
| Peer-editing | provides the peer-editing sheet used in conjunction with this essay; |
| Evaluation | provides an evaluation of your writing process and the essay in general; |
| What do I include in my manila folder for this assignment? | explains what to include in your manila folder for this particular assignment; |
| Movie Assignment | an assignment related to crafting active descriptions using verbs; |
| Menu Assignment | an assignment related to crafting elaborate descriptions using vivid imagery; |
| Restaurant Review | an assignment that asks you to synthesize previously learned skills, especially in objective and subjective description of food. |
| Dialogue Assignment | an assignment related to creating realistic and relevant dialogue; |
| "Kimo's Red Collar," by Lisa Kanae: | provides a professional sample readings associated with this unit. (you can pick which one you want to read) |
| "Shooting an Elephant" by George Orwell: | provides a professional sample readings associated with this unit. (you can pick which one you want to read) |
| Scholarship Resources |
LINKS TO MAJOR SCHOLARSHIPS IN AND OUT OF STATE Go to Financial Aid Office, Ilima 102, and ASK, politely, what scholarships the office might have. B. Apply for the scholarship, learning how to write a polite cover letter/statement of purpose. |
| Lecture Notes | provides a brief description of the elements within the narrative essay and underscores why we write them; |
| Commentary | provides an example of suggested techniques; |
| "Manny, Dat Punk" | provides a key example of how to use subjective and objective description for a character; |
| Description of Place and Person | provides examples on using prepositional phrases and adjectives to effectively describe a scene or character; |
| Description of Dialogue and Figurative Language; | provides examples on using dialogue and figurative language to reveal important aspects of a character's personality; |
| Action Verbs Listing | provides a sample Word Document about powerful verbs often used in describing action. |
| "What if I'm the only person in my narrative?" | provides a sampledescription of the individual's attempt to narrate his own life; |
| Sample Essays; | provides various samples from student writing; |