Week 5 — Your First Major Essay: A Story With a Point, or a Process Explained

Assignment 5 of the term — audit a chatbot's "improved" story, then draft and revise your first major essay: a true story that makes a point, or an explanation of a process you know well.

This adaptive assignment uses a coaching dialogue to help you turn a first draft into a revised essay. You remain the author. The coach asks questions, checks the reasoning you show, and waits for you to revise before it produces the required report. Last week you learned that an essay needs a thesis and a shape; this week a story's significance does the thesis's job, and every paragraph still does one job, as your Week 3 paragraphs did. This week's lecture tutorial, quiz, discussion, and Writing Studio practise the same moves from other angles; this assignment is where you put them together in a full essay.

The task

You will write from what you already know. This essay uses no outside sources: your memory and your own expertise are the material.

Part A — audit a chatbot's "improved" story. A writer jotted these notes about a real experience (illustrative, written for this course and attributed to no one):

"My first shift at the food bank warehouse. Sorting cans by the dates on the lids. A longtime volunteer showed me how to read the dates. I dropped a box of soup cans. Nobody yelled. We finished the pallet by noon."

The writer asked a chatbot to turn the notes into a vivid paragraph. Here is the kind of revision a chatbot might return. It was written for this course to contain mistakes; it is not a real chatbot's output:

1. On my first shift at the food bank warehouse, I sorted cans by the dates stamped on their lids.
2. The magnificent, towering, majestic shelves loomed over me like ancient guardians of hope.
3. A longtime volunteer showed me how to read the dates.
4. I felt incredibly nervous and overwhelmed.
5. Then I dropped a box of soup cans.
6. The warehouse manager rushed over and gave me a hug.
7. In a breathtaking, glorious triumph of teamwork, we conquered the final pallet by noon.

Work this problem, showing your reasoning:

1. The illustrative chatbot revision in the task has 7 sentences; 2 contain purple prose, 1 tells a feeling instead of showing it, and 1 adds a detail the writer never gave. How many of its sentences can stay unchanged?

Then name each sentence you would change, say what is wrong with it (purple prose, telling instead of showing, or a detail the writer never gave), and repair it. Check every detail against the writer's notes before you decide.

Part B — your essay. First, choose your mode:

• Narration: a true story from your own life that makes a point, such as a first day somewhere new, a mistake that taught you something, or a moment you saw someone differently.
• Exposition: an explanation of a process you can do well, such as a routine at work, a family recipe, a repair, or a skill from a game or a sport. It explains; it does not argue.

Then work this problem:

1. Your essay plan names 1 mode choice, 1 significance or purpose sentence, and 3 planned body paragraphs. How many planning items must your plan contain?

Write that plan: your mode, one sentence that states your significance (narration) or what your reader will be able to do or understand (exposition), and one line for each planned body paragraph. Then draft an essay of 750–1,000 words. For narration, give your scene to the moment where the significance is easiest to see, move through the rest with narrative summary, keep chronological order with time transitions, and end with a stated or implied significance. For exposition, put the steps in process order, open each with a sequence transition, and use concrete words a reader can act on. Either way, show instead of telling where it matters, and cut any purple prose.

Explain it to a non-expert

Your cousin has started a job where they write short reports about what happened during a shift, and their supervisor keeps writing "show, don't tell" in the margin. Write a 3–5 sentence note that tells your cousin, in everyday words, what showing means, quotes one showing sentence from your essay as an example, and names one honest limit — for example, that a report sometimes needs a plain stated fact more than a vivid detail. Explain any course term your cousin might not know.

For a different, ungraded example, imagine a coworker who keeps getting lost in a training manual. Model answer: "The manual lists everything you need, but not in the order you need it. A step-by-step version puts the steps in the order you would really do them and starts each one with a word like 'first' or 'next', so you always know where you are. Try rewriting the opening procedure that way. It will not cover the rare problems, so keep the full manual nearby."

Use that pattern for your cousin, with your own explanation and your own sentence.

Reflect on your revision

After you revise, answer one of these two options in 2–4 sentences; they carry the same weight:

• (a) Which change made your essay's point clearer or its order easier to follow, and what in your first draft showed you it was needed?
• (b) Which change turned a telling or purple passage into showing or concrete detail, and what did you see, hear, or do that you added?

Part 1 — Student instructions

1. Draft Part A, your essay plan, your full essay draft, and your note to your cousin before opening a chatbot.
2. Open any course-approved chatbot. Copy the entire Coach Prompt box, including its first and last marker lines, and paste it as one message. The coach will ask for your draft and then work one question at a time.
3. Answer in your own words. Use the coach's feedback to revise your essay, at least one revision that re-sees the draft rather than only fixing commas, and then answer reflection option (a) or (b).
4. Continue until the prompt's exit condition is met.
5. Save the chat's share link and copy the final report exactly as the coach gives it.

The chatbot is a coach, not a ghostwriter. It must draw out your thinking rather than write your essay, and it must never add a detail to your story that did not happen.

Coach Prompt

COPY EVERYTHING BELOW THIS LINE
ROLE: You are a careful writing coach for a first-year college writing course. Draw out and challenge MY thinking about narration and exposition. Do not write my essay, my audit, or my note for me, do not add any detail to my story that I did not give you, and do not invent work I did not show.

ASSIGNMENT: Work through these two problems in order, one at a time. Do not invent, replace, or reorder a problem. My essay is a narrative (a true story that makes a point) or an expository essay (an explanation of a process); it uses no outside sources.
The writer's notes for the Part A paragraph (illustrative, written for my course): My first shift at the food bank warehouse. Sorting cans by the dates on the lids. A longtime volunteer showed me how to read the dates. I dropped a box of soup cans. Nobody yelled. We finished the pallet by noon.
The illustrative chatbot revision I am auditing, written for my course to contain mistakes: (1) On my first shift at the food bank warehouse, I sorted cans by the dates stamped on their lids. (2) The magnificent, towering, majestic shelves loomed over me like ancient guardians of hope. (3) A longtime volunteer showed me how to read the dates. (4) I felt incredibly nervous and overwhelmed. (5) Then I dropped a box of soup cans. (6) The warehouse manager rushed over and gave me a hug. (7) In a breathtaking, glorious triumph of teamwork, we conquered the final pallet by noon.
PROBLEM P1: The illustrative chatbot revision in the task has 7 sentences; 2 contain purple prose, 1 tells a feeling instead of showing it, and 1 adds a detail the writer never gave. How many of its sentences can stay unchanged?
PROBLEM P2: Your essay plan names 1 mode choice, 1 significance or purpose sentence, and 3 planned body paragraphs. How many planning items must your plan contain?
For P1 I must also name each sentence I would change, say what is wrong with it, and repair it, checking every detail against the writer's notes. For P2 I must also write the plan, a 750-1,000 word essay draft, and a 3-5 sentence note to my cousin that explains showing in everyday words, quotes one showing sentence from my essay, and names one limit. After revising, I answer reflection option (a) or (b) from my assignment page.

SCORING CRITERIA: Score only evidence I supply, out of 100 points. Chatbot revision audit (P1): 25 if I identify both purple-prose sentences, the telling sentence, and the invented-detail sentence, count the sentences that can stay unchanged without error, and repair all four; 15 if all four are identified and counted but one repair is still purple, still tells, keeps the invented detail, or is missing; 5 if at least one problem sentence is identified and repaired but another is missed or the count is off; 0 otherwise. Significance or purpose, and the order that serves it (P2): 25 if my plan has all its items and my essay delivers its significance (stated or implied) or its purpose, in chronological or process order, with a time or sequence transition at each move; 15 if the point and order are present but the significance is blurred or unearned or a needed transition is missing; 5 if events or steps are present but no point can be identified, the order is jumbled, or the essay argues a side; 0 if no essay draft. Concrete, aimed detail (P2): 20 if the key moment is shown with specific sensory detail or each step uses concrete words, detail is aimed where the point lives, and no purple prose remains; 12 if one key moment is told, one purple passage remains, or detail is spread evenly; 5 if named feelings, abstract words, or piled adjectives stand in for evidence in most of the essay; 0 if no concrete or sensory detail. Plain-language explanation for a non-expert (P2): 10 if the note to my cousin uses everyday words, explains showing, quotes one showing sentence, and names a limit; 5 if it can be followed but skips the example or the limit or leaves a term unexplained; 0 if missing. Revision and reflection (P2): 20 if I show a before-and-after change prompted by feedback that re-sees the draft, plus a reflection on why it is better; 10 if the change is only editing, or only one of change and reflection is shown; 0 if neither.

Do NOT invent grading rules.

DIALOGUE RULES: Ask exactly one question per message and wait for my answer. Start by asking for my complete first attempt. Build each next question from my exact words. When a sentence of mine tells a feeling, ask what I saw, heard, or felt at that moment instead of supplying the detail yourself. Probe an unsupported claim about my draft and ask me to point to the sentence. Keep the conversation focused on questions rather than completed work, and take no side on any public question.

ENGAGEMENT GUARDS: A greeting, copied prompt, yes/no reply, or one-word answer is not a substantive exchange. Do not flatter or accept agreement as evidence. Praise only a concrete move I made. If evidence is missing, say what is missing and ask for it. Require a real revision plus a short reflection on why the revision is better. Do not issue the report early.

EXIT CONDITION: Continue until at least five substantive exchanges have occurred AND I have supplied both problems with the audit, the plan, the essay draft, and the note to my cousin AND revised the essay AND reflected on the revision. Stop only after whichever requirement happens last.

REPORT: After the exit condition is satisfied, output exactly these labelled lines in this order. Replace X with the exact earned score. Base every line only on evidence in this chat; write "Not supplied" for missing evidence and never raise the score for polished chatbot prose.
STUDENT'S SCORE: X/100
EVIDENCE FOR THE SCORE: [specific evidence from my audit, plan, essay, and note]
REVISION MADE: [what I changed and why]
STRENGTH: [one earned strength]
NEXT STEP: [one concrete improvement]
Then tell me to submit this report, my revised work, and the share link.
COPY EVERYTHING ABOVE THIS LINE

Deliverables

Submit these three items in the assignment entry:

• your revised work: the Part A audit with its repairs, your essay plan, your revised essay, your note to your cousin, and your reflection — written, or with the essay recorded as audio or video with a transcript; every form is graded by the same scoring criteria;
• the coach's five-line report; and
• the conversation share link.

Submit in any accessible file type or as a link; a recorded response may be submitted as audio or video with a transcript, or as text.

Equivalent route (no AI required)

This route assesses the same Week 5 skills — spotting purple prose, telling, and invented detail; choosing narration or exposition and giving the essay a clear significance or purpose; showing with concrete, aimed detail in an order a reader can follow; and explaining showing to someone outside the course — for comparable time and effort, about three hours, the same as the coached route. Complete Part A, the plan, the essay draft, the note to your cousin, and one reflection option. Then audit your own first draft against the attached scoring criteria, criterion by criterion: write T beside every sentence that tells a feeling, write "cut" beside every purple phrase, underline the moment your scene is spent on, and circle every time or sequence transition. Write a second draft that changes at least one of those things on purpose. Add a 150–200 word revision memo that names one change you made, the evidence in your first draft that prompted it, and one question you still have. Submit the revised work, your marked first draft, and the revision memo in the assignment entry; together they replace the share link and the coach's report. This route uses the same scoring criteria and the same points, with no penalty for choosing it.

How you'll be graded

The full analytic rubric is attached to this assignment in Canvas.

Academic integrity and AI use

The audit, plan, essay, note, revision, and reflection must be your own words. Do not ask the chatbot to write any of them or to add details to your story; if a detail is in your essay, it happened (or, for an explanation, it is a step you really know). This essay uses no outside sources, so it needs no quotations. Submit an honest share link from your own dialogue. The equivalent route keeps the same workload and evidence and requires no AI account.

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