Assignment 1

ENG 104: Critical Writing

FINAL DUE DATE: 15th Sep, 2021, Midnight

Objectives
In this assignment you will develop:
1. Your ability to write a structured essay
2. Your ability to form coherent and cohesive paragraphs
3. Your ability to use transition words

Assignment
For the first assignment, you will write a personal essay or memoir recounting your interaction with a
place, an object, a person or even an experience and how it was meaningful enough for you at a personal
level to bring about a change in your outlook or perspective towards life. This is not a typical academic
writing assignment in the way we discussed, but an exercise to help you move towards academic writing.

Personal essay outline

A personal essay or memoir is written to explore and reflect on the emotions associated with something
that is deeply personal to you as an individual. This personal essay will be written in the first-person, it
will be subjective as well as descriptive/narrative in nature. It will follow the five-paragraph rule:
introduction, three body paragraphs and the conclusion. Many essays, for example, talk about school
experiences and one could start an essay with, ‘On a seemingly ordinary, yet festive day of school, the
class bully broke his leg and made us all happy’.
The following outline will help you structure your essay:
1. Introduction: A good personal essay starts with a ‘hook’, a sentence that captivates the reader’s
imagination and encourages the reader to continue reading the essay. The line does not
necessarily have to be descriptive or serious enough for the reader to understand the validity of
the essay. It should be a sentence that is clear, crisp and interesting enough for the reader to
continue and engage with the essay. This opening sentence should also set the scene of the essay,
mentioning whether it is about a place, person, object and experience
2. The three body paragraphs contain the crux of the incident the writer is engaging with. It
describes the event(s) that happened and a description of the elements that populated that event.
For example, if one is recounting an incident about school, describe the place in the school where
it happened, how many people were related to that incident. Include visual markers from that
experience. The three paragraphs should have transition sentences, connecting the last line of a
paragraph with the following paragraphs. Good paragraphs also have transition words between
sentences to help the reader make a mental image of the incident. For example, a word like
‘thereafter’ signals temporal progression of the story.
 3. Finally, the conclusion sums up the lesson learnt from the experience the writer has just
recounted. What was the lesson learnt? What kind of perspective change happened? This
reflection will be a crucial part of the essay.
4.
Template for the essay
1. Introduction: Contains hook and accompanying lines.
2. Body paragraphs: Look at this brief plan below

Para. 1: Topic sentence: Note:

Beginning
Detail 1. Don’t forget
Action
to “Show,

Detail 2. Don’t Tell”:

List sounds,
Detail 3.

End with a transition

sentence smells,

sights, tastes,

Para. 2: Topic sentence: and textures

Middle that you
Detail 1.
Action remember.

Your
Detail 2.
experience is
Detail 3. your

End with a transition

sentence
“evidence”.

Use
Para 3: Topic sentence:
transition
End Detail 1.
 Action words to

mark the
Detail 2.
passage of

time.
Detail 3.

Conclusion: Lesson learnt and/or perspective changed, reflection on the experience.

Title: Finally give your work a creative and interesting title

Formatting Instructions

 Font: 12-point, Times (or similar), double spaced

 Margin: 1”
 Word Count ~1000 words (I will accept 900-1100 words)
 Include a title
 Insert page numbers flush right at top of the page (all pages).
 Add In-text citations and reference list (if needed)

Submission Instructions

Please read the following carefully as it will help ease the grading process and reduce confusion. 

1.Draft1: Please save your file in Word Doc as FirstNAME_LastNAME_Assignment1v1 and email to the
TA by 8th September. Midnight.

2. Draft 2: Please save your file in Word Doc as FirstNAME_LastNAME_Assignment1v2 and email to
the TA by 11th September. Midnight

3. Final submission: Please save your file in Word Doc as FirstNAME_LastNAME_Assignment1final for
the final submission via Blackboard by 15th September. Midnight.