4 Application: Writing an Autobiographical Essay
Unit 1 Assignment Description
Students will use four kinds of writing (narration, description, exposition, and reflection) to compose an organically-structured autobiographical essay motivated by a particular message. They will choose a particular community with whom they intend to share their story and compose accordingly; they may write to their families, their fellow students, or other communities. Essays should be roughly 1000 words and submitted in MLA-essay format. They should include a title and a dedication that identifies to/for whom the essay is written.
Prompt Suggestion #1: Share an experience that motivated you to pursue a degree in your chosen field. What happened? What did you learn? How did the experience change you? What did it make you want to do? What do you plan to do with your degree in the future?
Prompt Suggestion #2: Share a story, or share your experience of a story, that shapes your community, your family, your culture, or your experiences and perspectives. When did you first hear it? Who told it to you? What does it make you feel or think? How does it move you and others? Why and how do you carry it? Why does it matter? (The mentor paper/student sample included below answers this prompt.)
Prompt Suggestion #3: Choose a place of significant meaning for you, positive or negative. This could be your favorite spot in your house, the place where you write, a family vacation spot, a childhood home, or a place where a major life event occurred. Describe the place using all five senses and also why this place matters to you. What memories, emotions, or stories do you have here? How does this place influence or shape you?
Before embarking on this journey, we highly recommend reading the Student Resource page for The Writing Process and referring back to it whenever you need to.
Step 1: Understanding the Assignment
Step 1: Read the prompt slowly and carefully. Then read it again, identifying crucial tasks and details for yourself. This video from the Writing Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill can help. Ask your teach to clarify key tasks and details and other questions you have.
Step 2: Use this mentor paper and the Genre Features Chart below to understand the assignment event better. >>> Please note this student sample was written in response to Prompt #2.
| Genre Feature Questions | What do you notice about each feature? Describe these features in the boxes below. |
| Where is the title and dedication and what do they look like? | |
| What does the document look like? How is the essay formatted? | |
| What is the topic of the essay? What questions is it answering? | |
| How does the piece begin? | |
| Where does the writer use narrative and description? What does the writer use them to do? | |
| Where does the writer use exposition and reflection? What does the writer use them to do? | |
| How are these piece organized? | |
| How would you describe the author’s voice, language, and sentence style? | |
| How does the piece end? What does the writer want the reader to take away? |
Step 2: Brainstorming & Prewriting
Heart Mapping Brainstorming Activity
This prewriting activity can help you identify the experience and story you are going to share with your reader. This strategy was created by educator Georgia Heard in the book Heart Maps: Helping Students. >>> Please note this activity is written here for Prompt #3 but can be easily adapted to other topics.
Steps
- Draw a large heart on a piece of paper.
- Write your essay topic at the topic of the page i.e. “Places that matter to me”
- Draw lines within the heart to create 4 sections.
- Label each section with questions related to your topic such as:
- What places from my childhood do I remember most clearly and why?
- Where do I feel safe and supported now?
- Where do I feel important and energized now?
- Where do I do my writing and thinking and why?
- Where would I rather be right now and why?
- Next, brainstorm your answers to these questions. Try to have 2-5 ideas for each.
- Share and review your map with a classmate. Talk about which questions were the easiest for you to answer and which were the hardest. Think about which space you would be most interested in writing about and sharing with someone else.
- After your discussion, take 10 minutes to reflect and prewrite:
- What place is calling to me the most?
- What are its physical characteristics? What is it made of?
- What about it can I see, taste, touch, hear, and smell in my imagination?
- Who do I want to tell about this place and why?
Step 3: Outlining
Part 1: Identifying the parts of your essay
The first step to outlining is actually more brainstorming. This is the moment you identify “all the things” that need to go into you essay i.e. it’s content. Yes, you can add more content later as new details and ideas occur to you. Yes, you can remove content later that doesn’t fit. But this is your best guess right now about what pieces your essay needs. When working through this step, remember to keep your ideas short (don’t worry about full sentences!) and to be open to change. There are many ways to brainstorm. You can make a list in Word or Trello or Sheets. You can use sticky notes or q-cards. The important thing is that your content items are portable so that you can move them around and find an order in later steps.
Consider in your list:
- all of the specific memories or experiences you want to tell your reader about
- all of the specific details about the place that are important
- what primary message you want readers to take away or what is most important to you to tell them
- all of the context or history or information they might need to understand this place
Since this is an assignment with specific requirements and prompt, you can use them to brainstorm your content:
- the part where I describe the chicken coop at my parent’s farm, how it looked and smelled
- explain why we have a chicken coop and how old it is
- the narrative of the macaw
- the narrative of the bunnies
- the narrative of the adorable baby guineas that grew up to very ugly
- the narrative of the puppies
- the elephant’s narrative
- the narrative with the sugar glider
- explain why the chicken coop is important
- reflect what it taught me about hospitality and welcoming others
- reflect what it taught me about care
- reflect what it taught me about family
Part 2: Ordering the parts of your essay
The next step is deciding what order content should probably proceed in. Again, this can change later. It is important to think about your audience when you are planning your essay order: What do you think are their needs and expectations for autobiographical essays? What will be most interesting to them and catch/hold their attention? Is there information they need to know first or that they will want to know so that something else makes sense? What idea do you want them to leave your essay with?
Use the three-column structure below to begin to identify the pieces of you essay. We recommend identifying your introduction and conclusion first and figuring out how to arrange the body of your essay based on them.
| Introduction | Body | Conclusion |
| Move content here you think is likely to get your reader’s attention.
Move content here that sets up your topic and your message |
Move content here that tells your story.
Remember, this can precede in chronological order or material order as you move your reader through the place you are remembering/describing. It can be snapshots of things that happened with transitions between them. It can be descriptions of the physical space, interwoven with stories about different, specific elements. Remember, this can be as many paragraphs as you need it to be. |
Move content here that explains significance
Move content here that does reflection Move content here that you want your reader to leave with i.e. the message
|
Step 4: Drafting
Use your completed outline, along with the following tips, as a guide to begin drafting your autobiographical essay. We recommend writing your pieces in chunks and then fitting them together afterward with smooth transitions between ideas.
Introduction Tips
- Compose an introduction that opens in an engaging way, including a quote, brief description, thought, a funny observation, etc.
- Identify your topic, which includes establishing your purpose and offering a brief preview of your essay.
Body Tips
- In this section of your essay, draft paragraphs that specifically describe the supporting details/points listed in your outline. Don’t simply tell your reader the order of events, show them using descriptive language (hear, smell, taste, touch, feel). Also, incorporate quotes to enhance the experience for your audience.
- Be intentional about following an organizational pattern (chronological, narrative, topical, etc.) as you present supporting details in each body paragraph.
- Assure that each body paragraph opens with its own main idea, yet also clearly supports the overall thesis statement.
- Make sure to provide smooth transitions between each paragraph.
Conclusion Tips
- Develop a closing paragraph that highlights your thesis and key details. This can include reflecting on a lesson learned or a newfound perspective, as well as offering an update of your current situation.
- Finally, consider closing your essay similarly to the way you opened it, with a quote, brief description, reflective thought, or humorous quip.
Step 5: Peer Review
Exchange drafts with a selected or assigned partner, then follow the steps below to provide meaningful feedback in a peer review workshop. Remember to cite evidence from the writer’s paper when offering constructive criticism, including highlighting effective elements in the draft. In addition to completing the handout, it may be helpful to also communicate the feedback orally to the writer, as well as making notations within the draft.
As you will also be receiving peer feedback too, remember to ask your reviewer to clarify comments, as well as provide support for effective and ineffective elements when critiquing your draft.
First, read through your peer’s draft and hlep
| Genre Feature Questions | As a reader, please share your impressions of these features with the writer. If you can’t find these features or if you feel confused about them, please share. |
| Where is the title and dedication and what do they look like? | |
| What does the document look like? How is the essay formatted? | |
| What is the topic of the essay? What questions is it answering? | |
| How does the piece begin? | |
| Where does the writer use narrative and description? What does the writer use them to do? | |
| Where does the writer use exposition and reflection? What does the writer use them to do? | |
| How are these piece organized? | |
| How would you describe the author’s voice, language, and sentence style? | |
| How does the piece end? What does the writer want you to take away from their essay? |
Step 6: Revising
Revision can be a complex and overwhelming process. The first step is to prioritize what you will work on based on your peer’s feedback. Creating a revision plan for yourself can help this task feel less daunting.
So what is a revision plan? The purpose of a revision plan is to re-visit your work, to think through what you’re trying to accomplish, how well you’ve done that so far, and where you still need to make adjustments. Your peer’s feedback will help you do this. You can even ask your peer or your instructor what they think you should focus on for your revisions.
It’s recommended that you focus your revision plan on 3-5 high order concerns. Below are examples for what a revision plan should look like and not look like. The point is to help you think through and plan the achievable changes you can make. The more specific your plan is, the more helpful it will be to you.
What a revision plan should look like:
1. Revise my thesis: Right now, my thesis argues an issue, that not recycling is immoral. Since this is a proposal, my peer says I need to make the topic a problem to be solved rather than an issue to be argued. Here’s what I’m thinking: “In order to solve the problem of consumer waste, consumers should be given incentives to recycle . . .”.
2. My solution is clear, “Consumers need to be given incentives like tax breaks,” but the details need work. How can I make this solution happen? How can legislators be convinced? What kind of tax breaks am I talking about? How would the breaks be applied (no pun intended)?
3. I need to give more examples of how the problem has been solved in the past, and failed. I admit I need more focused research on the history of the problem. Some resources I might consult this time around are…
What a revision plan should NOT look like:
1. Revise my thesis
2. Develop my solution
3. Add more examples
Do you see how the second revision plan is not really helpful to you? It leaves changes still feeling big and overwhelming? That is why creating a plan like the first one will help you.
You can follow these steps to create your revision plan.
1. Synthesize the comments you’ve received from your peers and from me.
2. Note the most recurring comments first, issues that most people reviewers agree on. Consider how you can address those concerns in your own voice. Which advice will you take, and why? How will you incorporate it?
3. Then make a list of the kinds of less frequent comments, or where people disagreed. As you consider them, think about your goals for your project. Which advice will you take, and why? How will you incorporate it? Which advice, after careful consideration, have you decided you need to alter before you adopt it? How and why?
Do not include grammar, spelling or punctuation as part of the revision plan — those considerations are important during the proofreading stage, which should occur after you revise. And once you’ve completed your revision plan, revise! Use it as your map.
Adapted from Sweetland Center for Writing, University of Michigan
Step 7: Polishing
Review your final draft with your audience in mind, making any necessary changes to enhance engagement and clarity for your reader.
Helpful Tips
- Remember that no draft is ever really final, and as the writer you will always find some area that you may want to improve upon. Therefore, aim to create your BEST draft, not a perfect final paper.
- Proofread for spelling, capitalization, punctuation, run-ons, and fragments.
- Although there are many applications that check documents for spelling and grammar, you should still make time to proofread your essay yourself.
- It may be helpful to welcome a final review from a different evaluator, such as a tutor, parent, or peer outside of your class.
- You’re finished! So, celebrate this small milestone, and enjoy the satisfying feeling of completion.
