life experience
A personal essay is about a life experience, person, or object that has significance to you and that you tell to an audience for a reason. The Ashford Writing Center provides a helpful overview of Personal Writing, which reflects the type of essay you will be writing for not only the Practice Essay, but your Final Essay as well.
Use one of the ideas for a personal essay that you came up with in the “Generating Ideas for Writing” discussion. Your essay should stir readers into thinking about and remembering their own experiences.
When reading your essay, your instructor will look for the following features Structure – The consistency with which the writer identifies and maintains the essay’s main idea. Two main points of structure include the thesis statement and topic sentences. Thesis Statement – Emphasizes the main point proven in the essay. The thesis usually occurs early in the essay, most ideally as the last sentence in the introduction. Topic Sentences – Occur near the beginning of each paragraph. They state what the paragraph proves and advance the main idea conveyed in the thesis statement. Development – How the writer uses details and examples to evolve ideas throughout the essay and sequence of ideas presented in the essay. All of the ideas within the essay should clearly relate to the main point. Style – How writers chose to express themselves. Elements of style include word choice, sentence construction, and clarity. Style elements can vary according to the audience and purpose of the writing. Grammar – The instructor will evaluate your essay for common grammatical mistakes that can often affect the overall quality and clarity of your writing. Note: Your essay should be 550 words in length and formatted according to APA style as outlined in the APA Template handout. Save your essay as a Microsoft Word document (.doc) or rich text file (.rtf). Carefully review the Grading Rubric for the criteria that will be used to evaluate your assignment. Remember that the criteria will not affect your grade on this essay, but it will likely apply to future writing assignments.