Week 6 - Description Essay

Introduction

This week, we will continue our work on Description Essays. You will be writing and posting a draft of your essay, peer evaluating two of your classmates' drafts, submitting the final draft, and doing a grammar lesson and quiz on fragments and run-ons. It's a busy week!

Learning Objectives

After successfully completing the description essay lessons, you should be able to:

- describe the purpose, basic components, characteristics, and structure of descriptive writing
- demonstrate writing techniques of a description essay

Writing Your Description Essay First Draft

You already selected your topic for this essay in the previous week. Now, it is time to write the draft and get some feedback on it.

When drafting your essay:

- Review the essay writing prompt in the Week 5 module.
- Review the grading rubric.
- Use the introduction to establish the topic the essay will address and to give your main impression of your topic--this will be your thesis statement.
- Avoid addressing the assignment directly (don't write "I am going to write about my most significant experience" - this takes the fun out of reading the work!).
- Use the body paragraphs to support the thesis statement.
- Include as much sensory detail as possible.
- Organize the essay spatially or chronologically.
- The final essay should be 1000-1250 words, so the draft should be close to 1000 words.

After completing the draft, please post it for peer evaluation. Details are in the "Activities" section below and in Forums > Description > Draft.

Peer Evaluations

The time has come for peer evaluations of the drafts. Peer evaluation is your opportunity to get feedback on your essay draft as well as see what other students are writing about. As a reminder, some benefits of peer evaluations are:

- you can recognize the strengths and weaknesses in your own writing after reading and responding to another essay
- you can gain a better understanding of your audience and what they expect from your writing
- you may learn new information from your peers' essays.

After posting your draft, please complete peer evaluations of two peers' Description essay drafts. Details are in the "Activities" section below and in Forums > Description > Draft.

Writing Your Description Essay Final Draft

Now that you have completed your first draft and have had your essay evaluated, you are ready to rewrite your description essay into its final form.

Directions:

- Review the grading rubric for the essay.
- Review your peer evaluations.
- Review instructor feedback.
- Work through the “revising” stage of the writing process.
- Work through the “editing” state of the writing process.
- Make use of resources in the Writing Resources as needed.

After completing the final draft of your essay, please submit it. Details are in the "Activities" section below.

Fragments and Run-ons

Before we move on, we are going to have a grammar lesson on Fragments and Run-ons.

Sentence fragments and run-on sentences are common errors in writing. Learning how to repair and avoid fragments and run-ons will help to improve your writing skills.

What is a fragment?

A fragment is a word group that pretends to be a sentence but is not. To be a sentence, a word group must consist of at least one independent clause. (An independent clause has a subject and a verb and it either stands alone or could stand alone.) A fragment is lacking either a subject or a verb or cannot stand on its own and make sense.

Example

Fragment : When Jenny cooks dinner.

This word group has a subject (Jenny) and a verb (cooks). But, it cannot stand on its own: what happens when Jenny cooks dinner?

There are two ways to fix a fragment

Attach the fragment to a nearby sentence.
Turn the fragment into a sentence.

Example

Fragment: When Jenny cooks dinner.

Corrected sentence: When Jenny cooks dinner, she watches the news.

What are run-on sentences?

Run-on sentences are independent clauses that have not been joined correctly. There are two types of run-on sentences:

Fused sentences are two or more independent clauses joined together with no punctuation.
- Fused sentence example: Charlotte loves to ride her bike she rides it nearly every day.
- Corrected sentence: Charlotte loves to ride her bike. She rides it nearly every day.
Comma splices are two or more independent clauses joined together with a comma but no coordinating conjunction (the coordinating conjunctions are and, but, or, nor, for, so, yet).
- Comma splice example: Charlotte loves to ride her bike, she rides it nearly every day.
- There are four ways to correct this comma splice
  1. Use a comma and a coordinating conjunction to join the sentences.
    - Example: Charlotte loves to ride her bike, so she rides it nearly every day.
  2. Add a semicolon.
    - Example: Charlotte loves to ride her bike; she rides it nearly every day.
  3. Make the clauses into separate sentences.
    - Example: Charlotte loves to ride her bike. She rides it nearly every day.
  4. Restructure the sentence, perhaps by subordinating one of the clauses.
    - Example: Since Charlotte loves to ride her bike, she rides it nearly every day.

Watch this presentation on Fragments and Run-on Sentences

Fragments & Run-on Sentences

"Fragments & Run-on Sentences" presentation by Susan Wood

Please see The Guide to Grammar and Writing for more information, examples, and practice quizzes regarding fragments and run-ons. Use the practice quizzes to get yourself more comfortable with recognizing and fixing fragments and run-on sentences.

When you feel confident with your mastery of fragments and run-ons, proceed to Fragments and Run-on Quiz. Details are in the "Activities" section below.

Activities

These are the activities that you need to complete this week. All activities are due by 11:55 p.m. on their due dates.

Draft of Description Essay. Write a draft of your description essay. Post the completed draft as an attachment to the Forums. Drafts should be about 1000-words, double-spaced, and be either .doc, .docx, or .rtf files.
- Due by xx/xx.
- Points: Part of Final Description Essay grade. See rubric.
Peer evaluations of Description Essay. After you have posted your draft, choose two other students’ essays to evaluate. Please choose essays that have fewer than two peer reviews already completed. Each essay should only be evaluated by two classmates.
- Due by xx/xx.
- Points: Part of Final Description Essay grade. See rubric.
Submit final Description Essay. Submit the final draft of your description essay. It should be 1000-1250 words and double-spaced, and be either a .doc, .docx, or .rtf file.
- Due by xx/xx.
- Points: 100
Fragment & Run-on Quiz. After reviewing the material on fragments & run-ons, take the fragment & run-on quiz.
- Due by xx/xx
- Points: 20

The content of this page is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License except for any elements that may be licensed differently. The content of this page includes:

Original content from "ENG COMP I" contributed by Lumen Learning is licensed under CC BY 3.0
Original content from "Writing for Success, v. 1.0" contributed by Saylor Academy is licensed under CC BY NC SA
Original content contributed by Susan Wood
The presentation "Fragments & Run-on Sentences" created by Susan Wood

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