Sample English 120 and English 121 Assignments

Below are sample assignments from English 120 and English 121. Feel free to read through the assignments, and the notes to the right, to get an idea of what kinds of work students in each course do during the semester.

English 120 - LE1 - Personal Literacy Narrative

Due Dates:

SE1A – 9/13/04

SE1B – 9/17/04

LE1 draft – 9/22/04

LE1 submission packet – 9/27/04

Readings for this assignment:

Rose, Mike. “I Just Wanna Be Average”

Douglass, Frederick. Autobiography, Chapter seven.

Angelou, Maya. “Sister Flowers.”

Particulars for this assignment: 4 – 5 typed, double-spaced pages, 12 font, 1 inch margins all around.

From almost the day we’re born, we are learning new things. Literacy acquisition, or what you’ve learned, how you’ve learned the things you’ve learned, and from whom, will be the focus of this assignment. For example, exploring and examining at what age you learned to read, who read to you when you were a child, that second grade teacher who gave you a gold star on your spelling test, the history teacher who kicked you out of class your junior year, and being accepted to EMU are all parts of developing your personal literacy narrative.

Consider both the negative and the positive experiences you’ve had with literacy. It is not necessary to consider how things may have been different if you’d had different experiences, it is not even necessary to examine how each incident has made you the person you are now. What is important for this assignment is that you explore and describe your personal literacy experiences, and use at least one of the assigned readings to help you reflect on your experiences. Later on this semester, we will be doing more in-depth exploration of how your experiences with literacy have affected who you are today. For now, focus only on the experiences you’ve had.

SE1A and SE1B will help you develop this longer LE1. You will incorporate your personal experiences into SE1A, and examine the readings for this assignment and incorporate evidence from at least one of the readings in SE1B. Later we’ll discuss tying these two shorter essays together to develop LE1.

Short Essays

SE1A: 1 1/2 – 2 pages. In this first short essay, explore and examine your history with literacy acquisition. As stated above, consider what and how you’ve learned what you’ve learned, and who has influenced/effected what and how you’ve learned it. You’ll likely have lots of experiences to explore, so choose the experience or experiences that are most important or significant to you.

SE1B: 1 1/2 – 2 pages. In this second short essay, examine the readings you’ll be incorporating into your long essay. Find a quote or two from the readings that are important to you, and that you think are important to the author. Incorporate these quotes into your short essay, and discuss why you chose these quotes. What about them resonate with you, or remind you of your own experiences? Remember, you don’t have to have had the same experiences as the authors; indeed, it is likely the experiences will be quite different from your own. However, it is also likely that something in the readings will spark some memory of your own literacy acquisition.

English 121 - LE2 - Community Connections

Due Dates:

SE2A - 2/5/04

SE2B - 2/10/04

First Draft – 2/17/04

Submission Packet – 2/19/04

Required readings and other materials for this assignment:

Wideman
Ballenger
Your CRJ observation notes
An interview with someone in your chosen community
Your library research

Particulars for this assignment: 5 – 7 typed, double-spaced pages, 12 font, 1 inch margins all around

This essay will require extensive research, both within your community observations and the library. As Ballenger puts it, the inquiry-based essay is “an essay that is less an opportunity to prove something than an attempt to find out.” You will focus on your community observations, and you will work with the connections you’ve observed within your community. You will research your chosen subject using Halle Library, incorporate your field notes, and conduct an interview with a community member to develop this essay.

The most important part of the inquiry-based essay is developing the question you want to answer about your community within your essay. The Ballenger reading will help guide you to the type of question you want to ask. This essay should answer these questions:

What is your chosen community and topic?
Why is it important to you?
What have you learned through your research?
How is what you’ve learned important, and to whom?

You will most likely develop the question this essay will answer through your community observations. This essay must incorporate at least five different sources. You MUST include evidence from:

Field notes/observations
Two library-based sources from periodicals catalogued in the EMU library database
An interview with a community insider about the question you’ve chosen as your focus

And either:

An artifact that represents something about the question you’ve chosen to write about
An outside source for a specific audience that is intended to help that audience understand you and/or your community or your question – a brochure, a flyer, or some other approved source for a specific audience

This question is where the work you did for LE1 will become useful for this essay. The reason we focused so much on stereotypes should help guide you to the research question for this essay. Although your question for this essay does not need to be based on the stereotypes of your community, focusing on those stereotypes will provide you with a basis to consider what connects people within your community.

Work leading up to LE2:

Tentative proposal for your research question – due 1/29, 1 – 2 typed pages

This proposal will be based on the observations you’ve done so far. Hopefully, something within your community observations has inspired the desire for further inquiry into a specific aspect of your community. The proposal should discuss the question you hope to answer, how you came up with the question, and how you hope to answer the question in your research.

Revised proposal – due 2/3 at the end of class

The revised proposal should be a more specific question that you determine based on your observations and library research. It should discuss the same ideas as the tentative proposal, but will hopefully be a more finely tuned presentation of the question your research will attempt to answer.

SE2A – due 2/5, 2 – 3 typed pages

This short essay will be an attempt to answer your specific question about your community, using your field notes as evidence. You will need to pose the question, show how you came up with the question based on your observations, and what you imagine at this point the answer to that question is.

SE2B – due 2/10, 2 – 3 typed pages

This short essay will continue the attempt to answer the question, using the library research you’ve done involving the community you’re observing. You will use the same guidelines mentioned above for SE2A.

You will use these short essays, as well as the interview and either the artifact or outside source, to develop a solid, researched 5 – 7 page LE2. Because of the many sources you will be using for this essay, you will develop an MLA Works Cited page, and cite your sources throughout the text, also using MLA format. Work hard and have fun!

Back to Guided Self-Placement Homepage

Notes on these assignments

ENGL 120 Assignment:

LE1 - Long Essay One; the first longer essay in a four long essay assignment sequence in ENGL 120

SE1A and SE1B - Two shorter essays, usually 1 1/2 - 2 pages, that are written as steps in the process of creating LE1

LE1 Draft - The first draft of the long essay; students are able to revise these before turning in the submission packet essay

Submission Packet - Includes all the work done leading up to the revised draft, including both short essays, the first draft of LE1, the revised draft of LE1, a reflective letter written by the student about the writing process, and any notes or other relevant material

Readings - These will vary from assignment to assignment and instructor to instructor; most ENGL 120 instructors use a reader specifically created for teaching ENGL 120

Particulars - ENGL 120 LE1 essays usually follow the 4 - 5 page, double-spaced 12 font format

The Assignment - The paragraphs to the left give the background and description of the assignment, as well as the purpose of the assignment. In this case, students are exploring their histories with literacy and learning, and using the readings for the assignment to help them reflect on their experiences

SE1A and SE1B - The paragraph to the left explains more thoroughly the purpose of writing the two shorter essays, and gives a brief description of what each essay entails

SE1A - The first short essay written for this assignment; these first short essays usually ask students to reflect on their personal experiences on their own, before they start using the readings as reflections

SE1B - The second short essay written for this assignment; these second short essays typically ask students to analyze and interpret the readings for the assignment, why the readings are relevant, why they are important to the authors who wrote them

English 121 Assignment:

LE2 - Long Essay Two; the second longer essay in a three long essay assignment sequence in ENGL 121. The sample to the left is an inquiry-based assignment; other assignments for ENGL 121 may include ethnographic, I-Search, and multi-genre essays.

Drafts, Submission Packets, and Short Essays - Purposes and Particulars for these in ENGL 121 are the same as those listed above for ENGL 120

Readings - These will vary from instructor to instructor - there is no particular reader that is commonly used by instructors for ENGL 121. The focus of ENGL 121 is observing communities, but what aspect of the communities the students in the class focus on as a theme is up to the instructor. Instructors will often create a coursepack containing readings pertinent to their class themes

CRJ Observation Notes - When observing communities, students will keep a log of the observations they make within that community. The notes taken in this log will be used in the LE2 assignment

Interview - Each student in ENGL 121 will interview someone who belongs to the community being observed. Parts of these interviews will be incorporated into the LE2 assignment

Particulars - ENGL 121 LE2 assignments usually follow the 5 - 7 page, double-spaced, 12 font format

The Assignment - The paragraphs to the left give the background and description, as well as the source requirements, of the assignment. In this case, students are being asked to observe and report on the connections they see within their chosen communities - what connection is bringing the people together as a community.

It is typical to incorporate at least five sources in an LE2, which can include library-based periodicals, the interview, the CRJ observation notes, and another outside source, such as an artifact from within the community, a brochure, flyer, or another source approved by the instructor, as described in the paragraphs to the left.

The assignment students in ENGL 121 work on for LE1 has a clear connection to the LE2 assignment; all assignments in ENGL 121 are linked to each other by the theme the instructor has chosen for the class.

Tentative and Revised Proposals - These proposals are used to help students develop a clear direction for their LE2 assignments. After a few weeks of community observations, students should have an idea of what aspect of the community they plan to explore and learn more about. The tentative proposal should discuss the general question each student is going to focus on; the revised proposal should be a more specific, set focus question.

SE2A - The first of the short essays for an inquiry-based assignment asks students to begin the attempt to answer their questions, using the CRJ notes they've taken during their community observations.

SE2B - The second of the short essays for an inquiry-based assignment asks students to further attempt to answer their questions, this time using their library research sources.

The Whole Thing - The paragraph to the left describes everything the submission packet draft of LE2 should incorporate - SE2A and SE2B, the interview and other outside source, and a Works Cited page in MLA format.