Draft Letter assignment
1) CHANGING PURPOSE AND AUDIENCE
In your Draft Letter assignment you wrote a letter to a person who had a strong impact over your life (mentor, teacher, parent, friend, etc.). In the Revised Letter you are still going to address the same person and preserve the content of your letter. However, your audience and purpose will change.
Imagine that your letter to the same person is going to draw the attention of the public. For example, you may intend to publish your letter to a teacher in the school newsletter, or you may read your letter to a relative at a family reunion or anniversary celebration. The details of the recreated scene in the draft letter should become even more vivid so that the larger audience is able to visualize and understand them.
In the Draft Letter, you used an informal tone and language to address the person who influenced your life. Now the purpose of the Revised Letter will be to use a more formal tone in expanding the summary of your experience and show its relevance and significance to the wider audience (your community).
2) MAKE THE FORMAT APPEALING
Work on the format of your letter:
— Give your Revised Letter a title that indicates where you intend to publish or read your letter, for example: “A Letter to a Mentor (for Beverly High Newsletter)”, or “A Letter to My Beloved Father for his 65th Birthday”
— use full-block or simplified format (left justification, no indentation);
— skip some of the headings (the sender’s name and full address, and the recipient’s address) and use those that will be appropriate for a public reading (current date);
— keep the salutation/greeting and the complimentary close of your draft letter (and improve them if they needed improvement)
3) EDITING AND EXPANDING CONTENT
Make sure you edit and proofread your Revised Letter by correcting any grammatical errors, weak sentence structures, and spelling/typing mistakes.
Expand your letter: if you had forgotten to include the names of your friends or siblings, schools, parks, cities, season, month, etc. in the Draft Letter, do that now; provide specific details about what, where, when, and how things happened. In addition, expand your analysis by providing further examples of the impact of your mentor/friend/relative.
4) PERSUASIVE APPEAL
Revise your Draft Letter by adding some or all 3 of the persuasive appeals (ethos, pathos, logos) to support your views.
5) REFLECTION ON THE REVISION PROCESS
In a separate section included in the Revised Letter assignment titled “Reflection on the Revision Process”, reflect on the writing process that helped you produce the final, revised version of your letter.
In a paragraph or two, write a reflection on the following questions:
- How did your letter change when you reoriented your audience and purpose? What were you able to preserve and what to change in the revision? Describe your thoughts and observations.
- What did you learn about your own writing from the feedback on your Draft Letter? In your estimation, what are the biggest strengths and weaknesses in your writing?
- Which one of the persuasive appeals did you use in your letter? What kind of strategies do you intend to use in your next assignments in order to improve your writing skills and to enrich your vocabulary?
