Title III
English Composition Assignment
Interdisciplinary Course Materials
Culinary Arts
Course: English 021/ 023
Topic: Persuasive Writing
Project title: Writing a Persuasive Personal Essay
Project Description: For this assignment, the student will be asked to read two selections written by chefs about their work, and then explain in an essay of about 500 words why he or she would or would not be a good chef.
Author: Phyllis MacCameron (North Campus English Department)
Curriculum Expert: Paul Stenzel (North Campus Culinary Arts Department)
Semester Created: Fall 2007
A. Basic Directions
This assignment will ask you to read two selections and then to write an essay that will persuade its reader that what you are saying is correct.
Print out the assignment and its related materials, which are in an accompanying file.
Your essay should be word-processed if at all possible. Whether it is printed or not, it should conform to the basic requirements for college essays: it should be presented neatly in black ink, with writing on one side of the paper only. If it is word-processed, it should be double-spaced. Whether your paper is word-processed or not, you should use a heading that gives your name, the course number, the number of the assignment, and the date. The essay should have a title.
B. Things to Learn Before Starting the Project
This assignment directs you to write a college essay of about two pages. The essay is a personal essay, based on your analysis of your own skills and personality. Since it is required to be a persuasive essay—one that convinces your reader that what you are saying is correct—you will need to be sure you know how to support a main idea with supporting details.
This means that you should understand the concepts of • the thesis statement (a statement of the overall main idea of an essay or longer work), • the topic sentence (a statement of the overall main