Diablo Valley College

Fall 2015: English 122-5460, 2017, 3278

Freshman English: Reading and Composition
Unit 1: Essay 1
Unit 1 Learning Outcomes:
Students will be able to:
A. Demonstrate their ability to read carefully a non-fiction essay, identify and restate
the thesis in their own words; evaluate the nature and quality of the reading; and
assess whether the author has successfully supported the thesis.
B. Recognize how style and literary features (symbols, images, metaphors, etc.)
influence meaning; recognize varieties of tone; recognize the importance of
allusions.
C. Write a well-structured, college-appropriate essay free of serious sentence
errors, using a writing process that includes pre-writing, drafting, responding,
revision, and publishing. The essay will be focused on a specific topic, written
with a sense of style and voice. The students will write coherent paragraphs and
recognize and appreciate the sentence style of a professional writer.

Essay 1 Assignment
Write an 850-1000 word essay that is

Inspired by the published essay, Inside, outside of the tortilla by Jose

Antonio Burciaga in choice of topic, tone, and message

Focused on a single topic, explores a series of contrasts, establishes a strong

personal writing voice, and communicates a central message

Developed using a writing process that includes pre-writing, drafting, responding,

revision, and publication

Free of major grammatical and fluency errors, uses paragraph structures that are
appropriate to the content, submitted in the MLA format

Essay 1 Grading Rubric

This essay is graded on a 100 point scale. There are five grading points. Each grading
point has a total possible of 20 points. The closer your essay comes to achieving the
grading standard, the higher the points earned in that grading category.
1. Focused on a single topic the essay addresses and develops a single topic that
is identified in the first paragraph and is the central focus throughout the paper

2. Explores a series of contrasts there are many contrasts throughout the essay
which help the reader understand the significance of the topic to the author
3. Establishes a strong personal writing voice word choice, sentence construction,
and paragraph breaks set a personal tone that matches the content of the essay
4. Communicates a central message the author surprises the reader with a
unique or extreme perspective on the topic, and this perspective leads the reader
to an understanding of the central message
5. Free of major grammatical and fluency errors, submitted in the MLA format
there are very few technical errors, and these errors do not distract from the
readers understanding of the authors message; the paper is submitted in the
MLA format