We worked from the text on our expatriate essay and set the point of view. We chose the purpose of our essay: inform, amuse, entertain, explain, or persuade.
Next we discussed complexity or conflict. The instructor related the story of a student in her other class who discovered a town that has a name that is the same as his last name. She explained that the student had researched the town and found it is made up of large mansions and estates. This could be an example of the "complexity" or "conflict" element: how is an American student from a middle-class background going to approach the people of this town to find out if he is possibly related to the name?
We then discussed chronological organization.
We worked with description by doing freewriting about the neighborhood. Students put their writing on the overhead projector and we added adverbs and adjectives to make the writing more vivid.
After this, the instructor explained dominant impression and clarifying connections, which is written when the essay is essentially complete. It is often the clarifying connections phase that gives the essay meaning and makes it a memorable piece of writing.
During the last hour of class, students worked on the first page of the essay.
To do for next week:
Write four-five pages with in-text citation and a works cited page.
Note: only five citations need to be MLA style.
The rest can be a list of URLs or other references used in the paper.
