Writing Experience, writers have been studying how remembering past events and experiences is essential to the perspective writers take on values and issues that are important to them in the present. We often have specific memories that are connected to the communities, people, and values we privilege most in our lives, and writing about these memories can serve as a powerful, persuasive platform for connecting others to the issues and values that are most important to us. Remembered experiences are also conveyed most effectively when we are able to describe them using rhetorical tools that add to their vividness and clarity. The Learning Narrative in this unit therefore offers writers the chance to put together specific rhetorical skills, writing processes, and invention work to write about moments in time that have special meaning to them.   

Assignment

Tell the story of a significant experience that contributed to your current relationship with learning something new in a particular context.

The Learning Narrative is a specific type of essay that uses memory as its way of organizing information and communicating significance. A learning narrative should tell a specific story of a moment in time when the writer learned something important about themselves or the world around them. The context and setting for this memory is important, as are the details the writer chooses to include in describing and narrating their experiences. Readers need to know enough about the writer and about what was going on in the writer’s community to understand why the experience or memory was significant to them. Additionally, the learning narrative needs to make careful use of narration and other rhetorical tools to organize the essay, clarify its meaning, and even attract readers who share the passions or interests of the writer.

Assignment Components

In order to finish this project, we will complete the following parts together over the next few weeks:

· Invention/Prewriting: Collect and submit several pages of the invention work you complete in preparation for writing the Learning Narrative. This invention work can be typed from the questions in the CEL on Public Resonance, Analysis, and Point of Contact. If you complete this work by hand, include a picture or scan of a few pages of your work.

· Draft: Include at least one pre-revised draft of your essay. The draft needs to meet the word count of 750 words and must also apply formatting requirements for the project—in other words it must be complete. Make sure that your draft is clearly marked “draft.”

· Final: For your final submission, you will need to have revised your draft(s) to incorporate the changes recommended by your peers and feedback from your instructor. This final should meet all of the assignment criteria and will be evaluated with the Writing Experience rubric.