LETTER

Paper 1: Assignment and Criteria

FORMAT: the document must have an MLA heading and respect the usual requirements: a title, double spaced throughout, a running header with your last name and the page number, 12-point Times New Roman font throughout, no special font effects such as bold or italic.

FORMAT: the letter beneath the title must be formatted as a letter: a greeting, coherent paragraphs, a closing.

AUDIENCE: spelling, grammar, and punctuation: the letter will use casual, but standard grammar and punctuation. There will be no sentence fragments, no run-ons, nor other departures from college-level writing. The primary audience is the person to whom you write the letter. The secondary audience is the professor.

VOICE: your letter/paper will have some form of friendly and casual introduction that names its purpose. The purpose it names will match the purposes named in the assignment.

VOICE: the letter will have a “voice” appropriate to its task of helping someone who is soon to come to this country.

AIM: following the introductory material, the letter will DESCRIBE American high school approaches to writing. The description will reflect the “they say” we’ve read. The description will reflect your own experience.
The description will use terms useful in a complex comparison?

AIM: the letter will DESCRIBE American college approaches to writing. The description will reflect the “they say” we’ve read. The description reflect your own experience.
The description will use terms that will be useful in a complex comparison.

The Claim: this is the crucial section of the paper. You must accurately describe some issue that is important to the way BOTH high school and college think about writing…AND explain the difference in EACH of their underlying goals/values/beliefs of their viewpoints about those issues. Such issues are already part of what you’ve encountered by reading Anyon, Malady, and Gray. This is the paper’s most important task.

Remember that in the differences, you will discover the schools’ divergent goals, value, and beliefs. You need to devote at least half the paper to this issue. Avoid the one-sentence thesis typical of high school papers.

For Paper #1, you will write a letter.

The letter will be 700 – 750 words.
The letter will have a specific audience: a soon-to-arrive immigrant
The letter will help this newcomer know what to expect in her/his high school and college composition classes.
The letter will make a complex comparison of high-school composition and college composition.
The comparison will discover a conflict within American thinking about the purpose of education.

The letter will use a Pivot Structure.