Because classes have already ended but this date, it will not be possible to take a late pass for the final self-assessment essay.

The official STW syllabus states:

In this essay, students make arguments about how their writing has improved, using course objectives, specific quoted examples from your STW work, and analysis of those examples.

Length: 3 pages (about 750 words), with an additional “Works Cited” page.

Details

This essay is a persuasive essay, demonstrating your mastery of everything you have learned about formatting a paper according to MLA or APA style, a good thesis statement that advocates a debatable position (something a rational person could disagree with); evidence that demonstrates how your argument overcomes objections (opposing and/or incomplete, underexamined, alternative views); supporting paragraphs that advance your main argument, and a conclusion that does more than restate the thesis.

The evidence that you use will include direct quotations from your own work

• …arranged according to your own organizational structure
• …focusing on only a handful of the learning objectives you felt were most important to your grade
• …in order to demonstrate that you have learned important course concepts (review the syllabus for ideas).

Requirements

• The paper requires you to quote from your STW assignments. (I also encourage you to draw from Moodle activities, any feedback you received from me or from a classmate, emails, the syllabus, the textbook, or your classroom notes.)
• The paper requires you to reference specific course objectives (as found in the syllabus).
• The paper requires you to analyze (a more complex intellectual task than summary, definition, or application.) Review Bloom’s New Taxonomy.
• The paper requires you to make an argument about how you improved (and proving that argument would involve quoting from an earlier assignment that illustrates a problem, and a later assignment that demonstrates your progress).
• The paper requires you to cite your sources following the standard procedures of MLA or APA style. (This includes in-text parenthetical citations, and a works cited list.)

Focus in detail on a few important examples, rather than stating at the beginning and filling the paper with a long list of flat references and general statements.

• This assignment asks you to look back over the whole course, drawing on those specific elements that you consider to be most important.
• Over the past few months, I have asked you to reflect on what you learned after completing various assignments. Review those reflections — they are sources that can help you as much as the formal papers.

General tips:

• Writing a Personal Essay
• Show, Don’t (Just) Tell
• Review of logos/pathos/ethos “The Rhetorical Triangle”

• Logos = Rational Appeal (the actual idea you are communicating)

  • specific cases / anecdotes
  • analogies (“Criticizing a devout Muslim woman for wanting to wear a headscarf is like criticizing a New York hipster for not wanting to wear one.”)
  • facts and statistics

  Pathos = Emotional Appeal (gives your message force)

  • higher emotions: love, justice, empathy, responsibility (demonstrate how your argument arises from these noble feelings)
  • lower emotions: anger, greed, fear, revenge (avoid these in your argument)

  Ethos = Ethical Appeal (establishes you as a trustworthy, informed, well-intentioned writer)

  • fairness to all sides (including the “con” side)
  • credibility (speaking from personal experience)
  • reliable sources (you have heard from specific people with direct experience; you’re not relying on what “some people say”)
  • you respect the opinions of others (you emphasize a solution, rather than complaining about the way things are; you take the high ground, and don’t seem threatened by admitting when other people have a good point)