Your first paper in English 201 this summer is a “meditation” on the idea of summer: What is it that you associate most with the summer season?  What objects, activities, sensory impressions, etc.?

For those familiar with rhetorical modes, this paper primarily calls for description – no need to tell a story, or to formulate a logical argument.  Rather, you are trying to convey an impression, as the pieces we will be reading do.  Note the collection of images offered by Jane Kenyon in “Three Songs at the End of Summer” or Gershwin’s markers of summer in “Summertime.”

The papers should be coherent, although the association of ideas may be looser than in conventional academic papers.  Consider the evocation of memories in E.B. White’s “Once More to the Lake” or the various associations with fishing that Joy Harjo makes in her prose poem “Fishing.”

As will be true for all papers in this course, the finished piece should be 4-6 pages in length*.  Much of the work we will be doing this week is intended to help develop ideas to this length; however, that intent will be frustrated if you wait until the last minute to do your writing.  You should bring an essentially complete rough draft of the paper to class on Thursday, June 14, for peer review and other workshop activities.

* Page lengths assume the following: 1) The paper is typed or computer printed, using a standard size font – usually somewhere between 10 and 14 point; 2) papers employ standard margins, approximately one inch on all sides.  These criteria should be the default settings on your computer.

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