OVERVIEW OF THE ASSIGNMENT
Reading the newspaper does not merely inform good academic discourse; it also encourages conversation about our personal relationship to the world. The New York Times is an excellent resource for inspiring students to select good, focused topics for narrative essays. The concept is simple. Rather than assigning a specific topic (which can be too confining) or allowing students to pick their own topics (which can feel overwhelming), this assignment strikes a balance, requiring students to peruse the newspaper and select an article that strikes them and use it to inspire an essay about a related personal experience.
OBJECTIVES
to develop personal responses based on the ideas in an article
to develop the skills necessary to write a narrative essay
ADVICE FOR THE INSTRUCTOR
THE BENEFITS OF THIS ASSIGNMENT:
Choosing an article to spark the narrative essay tends to inspire more specific writing than having freedom to choose any topic.
THE CHALLENGES OF THIS ASSIGNMENT:
Some students struggle to differentiate between simply summarizing and writing a response versus using a chosen article as a springboard for telling their own story. Be sure to explain and model the difference.
TIP:
This assignment is highly flexible. It is more of a tool than an assignment. Using the articles to inform personal writing can be an in class writing assignment, or it can be a 1-2 page exercise at home. Students can also develop their essays into longer, more complex pieces.
ACTIVITIES
Step 1: Discuss narrative essays and read some sample essays.
Talk about the elements of a narrative essay. Assign and discuss some sample personal essays so that students get a sense of the genre.
Give students a selection of a few articles that you suspect they will be able to connect to personally and do an in class writing. Have them write for a few minutes, and then encourage them to share the connection they made. That way students will get a sense of the possiblities. Here are a few examples.
Topic of article Narrative essay
immigration first day in the United States
teacher evaluation an experience with a good/bad teacher
torture story about family tortured by the Taliban (a real example)
Facebook reflection on the problems of having a parent as a Facebook friend
Step 3: Decide what's next!
The next step is quite flexible. Do you want students to use this tool to write in class responses? Do you want them to write multiple short personal essays and then develop one of them? Do you want them to write just one and revise it?
Step 2: Practice writing essays in class.