Composing a short story about a life-changing event in his family from his mother’s point-of-view,  enabled Christopher Cindrich to fully explore how his father’s death had impacted him, his mother and family members.  He describes the assignment for his Spanish Language and Literature course motivated him to want to use his mother’s native language to tell her story–and learn it himself.

Students are highly motivated to do assignments that allow them to share or explore their personal lives, according to several research studies. (See link below for one such study.)

Vanderbilt college student describing value of writing assignment