Most high school and college English courses assign a narrative
or personal essay as the students' first writing project. At that
point students don't know what an essay is, let alone how to turn
their personal experience into an essay.
I find it is much easier to begin teaching writing with
impersonal essays using the boring old five paragraph essay format.
Then I ease students first into essays that include personal narrative
and then into personal essays.
If you choose not to follow my route, you must be especially careful
to teach students how to write a narrative essay before you assign
one. Otherwise you will end up with stories instead of essays.
The narrative is in the essay
An essay is a short literary composition that explains, describes,
or illustrates the author's opinion or perspective on a topic.
In a narrative essay, the narrative functions as an example or
illustration of the author's point, which we call the author's
thesis statement.
Students should have learned by third grade that professional writers
rarely state the point of a work (its thesis or theme)
in 25 or fewer words. Usually the pro establishes the thesis/theme
by what the legal community calls the preponderance of the evidence.
The thesis of most nonfiction can be deduced by examining the:
Finding the thesis of narrative work is harder than finding the
thesis of more traditional thesis and support essays because the
bulk of the piece is typically chronological narrative. That narrative
many not contain the thesis keywords often enough to be helpful.
The writer's two options
The sooner writers find their thesis statement, the faster their
writing task will be. Narrative essayists basically have two options.
They can:
-
Write the chronological narrative, figure out what its significance
is, and then rewrite the narrative to make the significance
obvious; or
-
Figure out the significance of the incident and then write
the narrative in such a way that the significance is obvious.
Most writers (students and professionals) prefer the second alternative
because it reduces the amount of rewriting required. However, the
alternative works only if the writer has thoroughly explored the
narrative's significance.
Most folks, whether students or professional writers, haven't explored
the significance of their experiences well enough to write an essay
about one of them with minimal rewriting. Most of us need to
write in order to think deeply about our lives.
The thesis statement can be implied by the choice
of details and words.
Writers don't have to put their thesis
in their essays in X number of words.
However, having their thesis statements written out in plain
sight makes it easier for writers to focus on appropriate
language and detail choices.
The 'personal essay' problem
A personal essay is a thoughtful, reflective retelling
of an incident by the person to whom the incident happened. That,
however, is not what students will understand the term to mean.
Many students are dismayed at the thought of divulging personal
information in an essay. Those who are delighted at the thought
of purging themselves have stories that you'd wish you had never
been told.
Since students typically associate the term personal essay
with intimate, even embarrassing revelations, I find it better to
use the term narrative instead of personal.
Better
still, have students write personal essays about their experience
with some topic closely tied to their ELA curriculum, such as:
What learning a foreign language taught me about English grammar
What I learned about oral communication from waitressing
In an educational setting, any writing prompts that get students
to reflect on their learning experiences are useful.
