Model #1 "Writing and the Frustration It Caused"

This essay was written by a student in WR 115 Intro to Expository Writing, a first year course for students whose writing has not yet reached college-level.This essay's strength is its forthrightness. The student is willing to self-disclose so that we can better understand what some students suffer in school learning to write. This essay is the result of multiple drafts.The first drafts were very short and full of sentence-level errors. The student worked steadily with a writing tutor throughout the term, and in the end produced a meaningful, eye-opening, and moving account of his writing history. For those of you who are future teachers, this is a cautionary tale. (This essay has been edited for this forum so that the focus is on content rather than errors.)

Model #2 "The Nightmare That Haunts Me Forever"

This essay was also written in a WR 115 Intro to Expository Writing class. This student's first draft in her first term of WR 115 was barely a paragraph which contained multiple sentence-level errors, especially spelling and sentence boundary errors. This student gained tremendous fluency in class, and after repeating the class, learned to write fully developed and focused essays. The strength of this essay is also the student's willingness to share her personal history so that others might learn from it. She recognizes that she needs to continure to work with a tutor to see and correct her sentence-level errors. This final essay is the result of multiple drafts, and the student worked closely with a tutor to learn how to develop her ideas. She also learned to use spellcheck, and also to see the errors that a computer will not catch. She also recognizes the need to use the accomdations available to her because of her learning disability. (This essay has been edited for this forum so that the focus is on content rather than errors.)

Model #3 "A Gradual Bloomer"

This essay was written by a student in WR 220. What I would like you notice in this essay is how the student focuses the essay in the title. The purpose of this essay is to explain how he was a "gradual bloomer" as a writer. Notice how this idea drives the essay. He states his thesis in the last sentence of his introduction and it is this thesis or main idea which drives the essay. Now look back at models #3@ and #3. These essays also establish the focus in title. The title sort of nutshells the thesis, and then the thesis drives the essay.Notice too how he keeps the essay on track, and returns to this theme in his conclusion, using the phrase, "thought it has taken several yearls for me to bloom as a writer."

Notice too the use of a specific example when he refers to his Desert Storm story. Vivid example and details are important in this kind of essay.

Model #4 Nunc Stet?

This essay was also written by a WR 220 student. Here is a good example of a writer taking a risk with the essay genre. She writes playfully and creatively about her writing experiences, bringing the reader into her dilemma about whether she has enough confidence to call herself a writers. The essay does indeed prove that she does deserve to call herself a writer. This particular writer has been accepted to the Creative Writing Program at John Hopkins University.

Model #5 Learning to Say Something

This is an essay that all teachers and future teachers should read. It is depressing to think that for all of our efforts to improve the teaching of writing, that so much stays the same. This is an intelligent and insightful account of how teachers can teach writing badly, making students feel that they are on a factory assembly line. Yet in college he discovered how to write authentically, and to use writing as a process to discover new ideas. Note too how he uses his title to focus his essay, to establish his main point.

Model #6 Writing Out From Chrysalis

In this essay a WR 220 student uses an extended metaphor to focus her essay.

Model #7 Reclaiming the Joy of Writing

This essay is written by a student in WR 220. She is from Japan and she writes about the difficulty of writing in a second language.