Essay 3: The Travel Piece
Page count: 5-7 pages, double-spaced, 1″ margins, 12 pt Times-New Roman

Travel Essay Grading Rubric

This essay assignment is designed to help you assimilate and organize information in a professional writing style, and to add an active, persuasive element to your writing tool chest. Choose a place (your hometown, or some place you would like to visit) and write and informative essay (5-6 pages) which tells the reader:

1. The costs involved (travel expenses, hotels and accommodations, types of food choices, entertainment, etc).
2. The climate, geography, and main economic driving forces.
3. Outlines the places of interest, and highlights the most important historical, cultural or political elements of the area.

Your voice should be professional, using an active voice and lots of detail and description. Interviews with travel agents, city hall officials, commerce officials, etc. are required. Look at travel/adventure magazines and travel brochures to get an idea about the kind of narrative voice that is common for such articles. Be careful not to plagiarize.

Requirements for the essay (see Grading Criteria for more):

• A well-organized, professional presentation of the information
• Lots of detail and description using all the senses
• Appropriate use of dialogue
• Use of active voice
• Quotes from interviews/articles
• Proper grammar, spelling, and punctuation

You are required to use at least two research sources for the paper; therefore, I will need a bibliographical list of books, articles or internet sources you used to write the paper. Do not plagiarize—read the material to get an idea of the subject, take notes—then, write the essay. On this paper, you will not have to turn in a works-cited page. However, any quotes or paraphrases must be given attribution.

Have fun.