You revised your essay during Week 4, and in this week’s discussion, you completed a peer review activity to analyze specific aspects of your draft. It is time to craft a rationale—a short explanation of the writing choices you made and why you made them.
Remember the process you followed for creating your essay. Think back closely and carefully about what you’ve done as a writer over the past month to reflect on your memories, find moments to talk about, skills to explain, goals to ponder. How did you pull all this together?
It is time to step outside your draft for a moment, critically evaluate your own writing and ideas, and explain the choices you have made as a writer and thinker. This is called a rationale – an essay that explains your ideas and strategies for writing the essay.
Resources
Be sure to review the Learning Resources before completing this activity.
Click the weekly resources link to access the resources.
WEEKLY RESOURCES
Reflecting on purpose and audience
The purpose of this paper is to explain what you did in the paper and why. How did you write this and why? You will need to look back and ponder those questions.
The audience of this paper is your instructor and classmates, who will read your paper and have questions about the process you used to create it and the specific writing choices you made.
Paragraph 1 – Explain your idea for the introduction. What did you talk about? Did you focus on a specific moment or something else to introduce your professional story and capture the reader’s interest? Why did you choose to start your essay in this fashion? What kind of effect were you hoping to have on your reader? When a reader sees your thesis, what will they expect in the rest of the essay? In light of your reflection on your writing choices and the effect(s) you were trying to achieve within your introduction, what are two positive revisions you can make in the final draft of your Career Narrative Essay? Develop two ideas for content you can add, change, or elaborate upon.
Paragraph 2 – In the body of your Career Narrative Essay, you covered three specific aspects of your life and skillset. How did you write the middle sections (body) of your essay? Talk about your topic sentences, organization, word choice, content, and tone of voice you tried to adopt in the body section of your essay. Why did you write the body paragraphs in the way that you did? Reflect on the specific writing choices you made and why you think these improve your essay. In light of your reflection on the body paragraphs (goals, skills, and accomplishments), what is one way you can improve each paragraph? Feel free to talk about various aspects of writing, such as content, organization, clarity, tone, or new ideas.
Paragraph 3 – Read, then think about, your introduction and conclusion as two inter-linked paragraphs. They don’t link directly, but circularly, as one circles back, echoes back to the other. Does the language, use of pronouns, and tone of voice seem consistent between the introduction and conclusion? Do these two paragraphs work together to effectively set-up, then put in perspective, your body paragraphs? How do the introduction and conclusion work to start and end the essay? Explain your writing choices. In light of your reflection on the introduction and conclusion paragraphs, what is one way you can make your introduction and conclusion work even better together to achieve a final cohesive effect?
Paragraph 4 – What evidence (facts, quotes, summaries, examples, anecdotes, etc.) from sources did you end up using in the paper? Where did you use evidence and how did you use it? Explain the places where you used either a summary or quote. Identify one paragraph that seemed to call out for evidence more than others. Why do you think this paragraph needed extra support? Be specific. Reflect on your use of evidence in the essay and explain the writing choices you made. In light of your reflection, what are two ways you can improve your use of sources and evidence? Feel free to talk about the sources you found or new sources you might want to use, adding quotes or summaries, or revising your commentary and analysis that follows evidence.
Paragraph 5 – Summarize your idea for the conclusion paragraph of your Career Narrative Essay. What did you do in the ending? What effect were you trying to have on the reader? Reflect on your conclusion and explain the writing choices you made. What is one thing you can add to make this conclusion even more effective?
Reminders
Use specific examples from your Career Narrative Essay draft to support your explanation of each paragraph and the writing choices you made. Feel free to quote or summarize ideas from your essay to support your analysis.
Use “I,” “me,” and “my.” Be careful of overusing them because this can create a repetitive writing style.
Think of this essay as a chance to evaluate your own work and make specific justifications for the way you wrote your draft. Explaining your writing choices and why you made them will help you re-see your ideas and gain an even deeper perspective on your work. Our final revision is next week, and this will get you primed for one more critical review of your masterpiece…otherwise known as the Career Narrative Essay.
On or Before Day 7
Write 750 words (minimum)- 1,000 words (maximum). Your piece should have 5 paragraphs. You must submit the essay as a Word/PDF file. Make sure to double-space your essay. Include your name and give the essay a creative title, one that draws your reader in.
Congratulations! You did it! A systematic evaluation of how and why you wrote the paper the way you did is hard work and requires deep thinking. Consider using the rationale process with writing projects in the future.
