Critically analyze the ideas in the text to make a claim about your memoir’s message, and explain this analysis to readers

Essay 6 at a Glance

Essay 6 is your chance to use everything we have learned this semester to write an excellent essay. Here’s your chance to show the skills you have developed in carefully reading and understanding texts and making connections among the ideas in multiple texts to discuss the message your memoir makes about success and response to adversity. This will require that you continue to choose strong specific examples from the text and explain your analytical connections to readers.

Main Goals for Essay 6

Focus your essay with a strong thesis statement that makes a claim about your chosen memoir’s message about the factors leading the individual(s) to success and their response to adversity, and states the reasons for that claim (your “because” statement).

Provide effective and developed support for your claim by summarizing/paraphrasing the ideas from your memoir as well as the other four texts you are using to analyze your memoir’s message.

Critically analyze the ideas in the text to make a claim about your memoir’s message, and explain this analysis to readers.

Create organized paragraphs that focus on one main point and divide your argument into manageable chunks for your readers

Prompt for Essay 6

For your final essay assignment, you will be analyzing your memoir through the lens of the readings we have completed this semester. Your essay should focus on making a claim about the overall message of the memoir based on what we have learned about the different ways in which people are able to succeed, how people deal with external obstacles (i.e. family, race, gender issues), and how people respond to adversity in order to succeed through the various texts we have read this semester.

In coming up with your essay’s focus, I encourage you to think about all that you’ve learned in the texts we’ve read this semester, but in your essay, you only need to discuss four of these texts:

Grit from Angela Duckworth’s TED Talk “The Key to Success? Grit” and Angela Duckworth’s article “The Significance of Grit”

Habits of mind from the excerpt from Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing

Fixed Mindset and Growth Mindset from Carol Dweck’s article “Brainology”

Sources of motivation, including extrinsic and intrinsic motivation, autonomy, mastery, and purpose, from Daniel Pink’s book Drive

Different definitions of success as presented in “Success” by A.S. Pearse

Internal factors and personal qualities such as high delay abilities from “Don’t! The Secret of Self Control” by Jonah Lehrer

Educational success from “How Teacher’s Make Children Hate Reading” by John Holt

External influences on success including family from the chapters in Bossypants, “The Stories That Bind Us” by Bruce Feiler and “The Science of Success” by David Dobbs

External influences on success such as gender and race from “A Childhood Dream, Realized” by Tina Fey, “I Want a Wife” by Judy Brady, “I Won. I’m Sorry.” By Mariah Burton Nelson, “Horatio Alger” by Harlon L. Dalton, and “Black Like Them” by Malcolm Gladwell and all of the Ted talks.

Remember to consider the grey areas and to think about the complexities in both your memoir and other texts, and in your essay, be sure to include:

Support for your argument with relevant ideas, information, and quotations from your memoir

Support for your argument with relevant ideas, information, and quotations from at least four of the texts we have read this semester

Things to Shoot For:

Show that you have carefully read your memoir and the other texts this semester and that you have fully and considered the different viewpoints and evidence.

Show you are really thinking about the topic—these are complex ideas, so don’t settle for easy answers.

Write so that someone who is not in our class could understand it. Assume your audience has not read any these texts.

Write at least 5 complete pages, typed, 12 point font, double-spaced, 1 inch margins.

Turn-in Procedures:

Your final draft is due Tuesday, 12/13/16 in my office by 5PM

Your Writing Center formal conference (optional but suggested) must be completed by 12/12/16

Bring your rough draft (due 12/8), your completed Writing Center signature form, your packet of work from your memoir book club, your prewriting (due 12/8/16), and a blank rubric to my office on 12/13/16

Remember,

The signature form must be completed by 12/12/16.

You must bring the prompt, this signature sheet, and any writing you have completed to get credit for a formal conference in WR 380.

This sheet must be signed, dated, and completed in order to receive credit for your conference in WR 399.

You can only get credit for one formal conference per writing assignment, but I encourage you to meet with an instructor more than once during your writing process.

Main Goals for Essay 6

Focus your essay with a strong thesis statement that makes a claim about your chosen memoir’s message about success, and/or response to adversity and states the reasons for that claim (your “because” statement).

Provide effective and developed support for your claim by summarizing the ideas from your memoir as well as the other four texts you are using to analyze your memoir’s message.

Critically analyze the ideas in the text to make a claim about your memoir’s message, and explain this analysis to readers.

Create organized paragraphs that focus on one main point and divide your argument into manageable chunks for your readers

Instructions for Your Conference

For your formal conference, please have the instructor look at your thesis statement AND at least one section of your essay in which you discuss how one of the texts we read this semester connects to your memoir. Ask your instructor to focus on your summary of ideas from the text and, most importantly, your analysis of how this text connects to your memoir’s overall message about motivation, change, and/or reaction to adversity (goals 2 and 3 above).

Here, before your conference, prepare one specific question about your chosen section to ask your instructor. Your question should focus on your critical analysis in that section:

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After Your Conference

Use the space below to explain what you learned and how you will change your draft based on your conference:

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