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Personal Letter: Describing an Experience or Passion (300-500 words)— Due Date:

    Personal Letter: Describing an Experience or Passion (300-500 words)—
    Due Date: Friday, 21 January
    Your task for this assignment is to write a descriiption of a passion or event that is very important to you. It should be something personal, but not so personal as to be inappropriate or embarrassing to write about.
    As detailed in chapter 2 of Everyone’s an Author, there are six major elements to consider when drafting an argument: purpose, audience, stance, genre, medium, and design. You should pay particular attention to the first three in the drafting of this letter. What is your purpose? How are you conceptualizing your audience (whom are you trying to address in your letter)? What is your major stance or claim? Considering your audience, what would be the best way to support your stance?
    Personal letters as a genre have a rich literary tradition. Often written to specific people, they can also become beloved by other, unintended audiences. Actual historical figures, for instance, wrote letters to family and friends; with time, however, these letters became historical documents, and perfect strangers that were born generations later can still read these letters with pleasure. Your letter should take this into consideration: although you may decide to address your letter to someone specific (a friend, a parent, etc.), you should also be thinking about how other readers might be influenced or effected by your letter.
    Consider Larry Lehna’s “The Look” (pg. 196). Although it isn’t a letter, it is written in first-person, and it relates a very personal experience. Review this reading and consider how Lehna appeals to your feelings; how he paints a vivid picture of where he was, what happened, and where he eventually arrived? What emotions does Lehna want you to experience? What major stance or idea (or ideas) is he trying to support? What similarities—or differences—is he assuming between himself and his readers? He bases all of his rhetorical choices on these questions, and you should do the same in your letter.
    Drafting Requirements:
    Your letter should be double-spaced and written in 12-pt. font, using a simple style such as Calibri. Provide the following information at the top of the page, left-aligned: your name, the instructor’s name, the course title, and the date. Your sample should have an original title that is center-aligned and located after the required information. You do not have to provide MLA in-text citations or a work-cited page for this assignment.

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