Assignment:
Write an essay of 3-4 pages about a classmate, introducing readers to specific beliefs and values that shape and influence their sbuject. Observe your subject closely, and then present what you have learned in a way that both informs and engages readers.
Basic Information:
Magazines and newspapers are filled with profiles. Unlike conventional news stories, which report current events, profiles tell about people, places, and activities. Some profiles take us behind the scenes of familiar places, giving us a glimpse of their inner workings. Others introduce us to the exotic-peculiar hobbies, unusual professions, bizarre personalities. Still others probe the social, political, and moral significance of our institutions.
Profiles share many features with autobiography, such as narrative, anecdote, description, and dialogue. Yet profiles differ significantly from autobiography. Whereas an autobiographer reflects on a remembered personal experience, a profile writer synthesizes and presents newly acquired observations. In writing a profile, you practice the field research methods of interviewing and notetaking, commonly used by investigative reporters, social scientists, and naturalists. You also learn to analyze and synthesize the information you have collected.
A profile is a special kind of research project. Profiles always involve visits: meeting with a person or going to a place. Profile writers take notes from observations and interviews.
Profile Essays:
? Are based on a writer's newly acquired observations through interviews and notetaking.
? Introduce readers to specific insight to people.
? Provide information while at the same time arousing readers' curiosity.
? Present scenes and people vividly and concretely through description, action, and dialogue.
? Reveal an attitude toward their subjects and offer-implicitly or explicitly-an interpretation of them.
? Create a dominant impression of the subject.