August 18, 2014
Critical Analysis of Letter as Essay
The Letter as Essay assignment introduces the class to place-based writing. It allows students to begin to analyze the places they find themselves most interested in on campus and take the analysis to written form. In writing their letters to people from home, people who perhaps have never been to Iowa State, the student can take a critical look at the campus and describe in a genre that may be less formal than the subsequent essays they will be writing.
August 18, 2014
“Seeing the Moment”
“I think students, or any writer for that matter, have a difficult time understanding that an audience can’t see what they are seeing as they write a description of a memory or place. The result is often a sparse description that doesn’t paint much of a picture for the audience. This activity forces students to put themselves back in the place they are describing and give a hyper-detailed description of their place in order to help their audience see, smell, hear, taste, and feel it more like the writer. This activity is used during the invention stages of the Letter-As-Essay assignment that asks students to write about home.”