This is an open-ended, first-person essay in which you explore your own relationship to the course theme (Multilingual America). Put simply: tell some aspect of your story and what it reveals about the multilingual world we live in. There is no anecdote too small, no experience unimportant when writing a personal narrative. The primary challenge is drawing connections between your own experience and the topics, themes, and readings discussed in class. This essay is your opportunity to reflect on your life experience as a legitimate source of knowledge that can be put in conversation with scholarship and culture at large.
Essays should be 4-5 pages in length, double-spaced, and include MLA citations and a separate Works Cited page;
Successful personal narratives will place the author’s personal experience in direct dialogue with sources we’ve read for class; and
Structurally, everyone’s essays will be fundamentally different (i.e., there is no “proper” way to write a personal narrative)