Crafting the Essay: Individually-Paced Format

About the Course

Crafting the Essay: Individually-Paced Format

Grades 7-10
CTY-Level
Individually Paced
Language Arts

Bring your experiences to life on the page in this personal essay course. Through 10 assignments, we’ll experiment with different essay formats to describe scenes, illustrate conflicts, narrate events, share memories, and extract meaning for yourself and your readers. As you progress through the course, you will use your senses to create vivid descriptions, observe and choose details that convey your perspective to readers, imagine experiences and describe events from other points of view, and deconstruct essays and use them to create new works of writing. You will work on each assignment for at least one week, engaging in all steps of the writing process: ideation, pre-writing, drafting, applying feedback, revising, editing, proofreading, and reflection. Individually paced writing courses are best suited for self-motivated writers with excellent time management skills who will maintain regular email correspondence with their instructors.

Recommended length of enrollment: 6 months

Time Commitment: 4-6 hours of independent work per week.

Course Overview

What we'll do

We’ll complete 10 essay projects over 10 course units. Each unit includes two lessons, a pre-writing exercise, an essay assignment, and a reflection letter. Your instructor will provide detailed feedback on each exercise and assignment, and you will apply that feedback to your work on the next unit. This course does not have live classes, but students can schedule an individual meeting with the instructor as needed.

What we’ll learn

To analyze a model text and apply the observations to your own writing
To engage in the writing process, including pre-writing, drafting, shaping, editing, and submitting for feedback, and then using feedback to revise
Strategies to assess your own writing, identify needs, and plan revisions
To identify a main idea within a draft and develop it through revision
To select factual, informational, and sensory details to shape a narrative or description
To pay careful attention to word choices and phrasing
To narrate, reflect on, and extract meaning from your personal experiences
To describe feelings and behaviors from another person’s point of view
To develop observational skills and use meaning to select appropriate sensory, factual, and informational details to describe the scene in writing

By the end of the course, you will be able to:

Employ pre-writing strategies to externalize ideas and evaluate which are the strongest
Proofread, analyze, restructure, and revise drafts for submission
Select events and details that develop and advance an essay’s thesis
Employ figurative language and literary devices to enhance your narratives
Incorporate feedback on your writing and make appropriate changes
Reflect on personal experiences and extract meaning from them in essays
Write in a range of tones, for a variety of audiences
Demonstrate empathy and different points of view
Reflect on your writing process and growth in letters to your instructor
Ask your instructor for help and have confidence discussing your writing with an adult

How we'll measure learning

Instructors evaluate student work using marking guides and rubrics and provide detailed constructive feedback on each pre-writing task and essay. This course is aligned to ELA Common Core standards for grades 11-12.

Apply any time and get started in 2 weeks

Classes

Students enroll in a course by selecting an open class below. Students progress at their own pace following course guidelines, with guidance from instructors who strive to meet individual needs. While the course provides students with independence and flexibility, students must manage their time to complete the course before the end date.

Note: You need an active CTY Account to complete registration through MyCTY.

Up to 9 months of access

Choose your start date

$1399 - $1499

Enroll

Testing and Prerequisites

	Math	Verbal
Required Level	Not required	CTY-Level

Check your eligibility using existing test scores If you do not have existing test scores:

Students must achieve qualifying scores on an advanced assessment to be eligible for CTY programs. If you don’t have qualifying scores, you have several different testing options. We’ll help you find the right option for your situation.

Cost and Financial Aid

Tuition
- Varies
Application fee
- Nonrefundable Application Fee - $15 (Waived for financial aid applicants)
- Nonrefundable International Fee - $20 (outside US only)

Financial Aid

CTY Financial Aid Availability for Online Programs:

Academic Year 2023-24 (Course start dates July 1, 2023- June 30, 2024): We have concluded our financial aid application review process for Academic Year 2023-2024 Online Programs.

Academic Year 2024-25 (Course start dates July 1, 2024- June 30, 2025): Financial Aid funding is currently available for all eligible students while funding lasts. If interested in applying for financial aid, please select a course with start date of July 1, 2024 or later.

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Earning School Credit

Recommended school credit: One half of an academic year

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Technical Requirements

This course requires a computer with high-speed Internet access and an up-to-date web browser such as Chrome or Firefox. You must be able to communicate with the instructor via email. Visit the Technical Requirements and Support page for more details.

This course uses a virtual classroom for instructor-student communication. The classroom works on standard computers with the Zoom desktop client, and on tablets or handhelds that support the Zoom Mobile app. Recorded meetings can only be viewed on a computer with the Zoom desktop client installed. The Zoom desktop client and Zoom Mobile App are both free to download.

Terms & Conditions

After a you complete a course, your projects may be used to illustrate work for future students. 

Enhance your skills in creative writing and critical reading, learn to craft effective sentences, and develop an analytical approach to reading and writing through our Language Arts courses. Guided by our expert instructors, you can further develop your communication skills in our interdisciplinary visual fluency courses, and explore topics in communication theory, design theory, and cognitive psychology. Through coursework and online discussions with classmates from around the world, you’ll elevate your writing structure and style, hone your craft, and become an adept wordsmith fluent in the language of literary arts.

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Meet our Language Arts Instructors

I realize that I love teaching on an almost daily basis. It comes to me in the form of a student's 'ah-ha' moment, when everything clicks and the student understands a challenging concept. I get goose bumps just thinking about it!

Yvonne Borresen

Language Arts Instructor

Online Programs