Assignment Instructions/ Description
This assignment will be graded as a “mini” portfolio consisting of (A) a memoir and (B) a letter. The criteria for evaluation are listed below.
Purpose of the Assignment: To give you the experience of how writers must shift the "same" material to shape it to fit a new rhetorical situation.
Component A
Component B - (100 pts.)
Write a 2-3-page letter to Patricia Hampl, business letter format, single spaced, responding to her article about writing a memoir. How does your experience writing your own memoir validate/question/challenge her claims in "Memory and Imagination"? As you write this letter, you will discuss your own experience as an author of a memoir and cite passages from your memoir as evidence for your claims. When you write the letter, consider carefully what Hampl says about the difference between the narrative self and the reflective self in relation to your own project. Include 2 quotes from the Hampl reading and 2 quotes from your memoir. First person is allowed. No Works Cited page.
Criteria for Evaluation:
• Does your letter demonstrate that you have understood (not necessarily agreed with) Hampl’s ideas?
• Have you utilized your memoir in a way so that appropriate details are presented for this new writing situation?
• Is the language of your letter clear (i.e. easily accessible to the readers), concrete, and appropriate to your purpose (i.e., responding to the author’s claims about memoir)?
• Do you avoid clichés and stilted sentence structures and phrasing?
• Are your grammar problems few enough and insignificant enough that they don’t get in the way of understanding? For instance, is your letter presented in complete sentences? Are subject-verb, pronoun, and verb tense agreement errors rare? Are spelling errors infrequent?
Key outcomes met with this assignment:
Understand the concept of rhetorical situations: the relationship among writer-audience-subject-context. Apply critical reading strategies to a variety of publicly and individually produced texts.
Work with demanding readings and learn to interpret, incorporate, and evaluate these readings
Use writing as a way to learn—to think about, question, and communicate ideas. Develop successful, flexible strategies for generating, revising, and editing texts. Understand the collaborative and social aspects of the writing process. Critique your own and others’ texts.
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