Creative Literature Response

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Assignment by Hyoung Min Lee, Bedford New Scholar 2021

Assignment Purpose

The purpose of this assignment is to help you practice the following composition and reading skills that are important in this course, in school, and potentially in professional life beyond school. 

• Understanding a written text accurately
• Developing creative thinking skills
• Creating an interpretation of a written text 
• Expressing thoughts in effective writing
• Assessing others’ writing 

This assignment is designed to help you practice engaging with literary texts in writing by utilizing creative thinking and expression before we move on to other more formal writing assignments that will ask you to pay more attention to the rules for formatting and standards of literary analysis. 

For this assignment, choose a literary text among the texts we have discussed so far in our course.

Steps to help you find a good literary text for you to write about:

• Review your discussion posts (your reflection/questions on novels, short stories, and poems we have studied so far in this writing course) and choose a text for which you have a question of your own or would like to respond to in depth.
• Read the prompts below in this assignment sheet and see which ones you find interesting and/or comfortable to work on. 
• In choosing a prompt, also ask yourself if responding to the prompt could help you begin to develop your own interpretation of the text while expressing your creativity.

Your response should include your full name, date, prompt # (or explanation of your own prompt), and the title of your response.

Rubric

Expectations	Excellent	Good	Average	Needs Work
Basics (5)	Has all the basic components (Your full name, date, prompt #, a title)	Meets most of the requirements to be “Excellent” but misses one basic component	Missing two basic components	Missing Significantly lacks development
Length (10)	350 - 500 words	Is slightly longer or shorter than 350 – 500 words	Is significantly longer than 500 words	Is significantly shorter than 350 words (lacks development)
Prompt/ Relevance(10)	Follows the prompt perfectly	Mainly follows the prompt	Does not seem to have understood the prompt	Is not a response to the prompt
Content (20)	Understands the chosen literary text very well and manages to include specific details from the text to reveal/support the writer’s interpretation of the text	Shows a good understanding of the chosen literary text and manages to include some details from the text but perhaps do not manage to use them judiciously	Is about the chosen text but does not include details	Does not show an understanding of the text
Mechanics (5)	Shows excellent spelling, punctuation, and grammar	Has a few (less than five) mechanical errors but the errors do not interfere with a smooth reading	Has five or more spelling, punctuation, and grammatical errors	Has numerous mechanical errors that interfere with a smooth reading

Choose one of the following prompts for this assignment and respond in 350 - 500 words.

Prompt #1: Imagine yourself as a character in a short story or a poem we read. Write a diary entry from the character’s point of view. You can write about an event, inner or external conflict present in the literary text of your choice and write about them. Make sure to write down the details of what happened and express what you felt and thought as the character. Emulating the tone of the character successfully would be great! 

Prompt #2: Imagine yourself as a character in a short story or a poem we read. Write a letter to another character or to an object that appears in that literary text OR to yourself in real life. In that letter, be sure to address some of the concrete details from the text. What would you want to tell, ask, etc. in the letter as the character of your choice? Try to make sure your letter is not too repetitive. 

Prompt #3: Be yourself and write a letter to a character in a short story or a poem we read. You may address specific elements of the literary text and ask a question. Instead of simply asking questions, try to respond to your own question in the letter and see what remains unanswered. Deploy your close reading skills! While you may reveal your feelings about the character quite freely since it is a personal letter you are writing, please try to maintain a polite tone throughout the letter. 

Prompt #4: Be yourself and write a letter to the writer of a literary text of your choice. You can ask about certain choices they made (e.g., symbols, tone). Instead of simply asking questions, try to respond to your own question in the letter and see what remains unanswered. Deploy your close reading skills! Please write a cordial letter where you ask about specific choices rather than merely judging the text’s quality.   

Submit the assignment:

• Create your own Google Docs link and insert the link on the provided document.
• Allow your instructor and peers to edit the document. We will be reading and commenting on each other's creative response in class.                  

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