Essay Assignment: The Literacy Narrative
Prompt: Write an essay of at least three full pages in which you tell a personal story about one of the following:
Option 1: Write a narrative about an educational experience you had in school (elementary, junior high, or high school) that affected the way you thought about your abilities as a student and/or as a writer-either positively or negatively. What was the experience? Who was involved? How did the experience affect you? Has your attitude about your abilities as a student or writer changed since that time? Explain why your attitude has changed or why it has not changed.
Option 2: Write a narrative about a person who influenced you and your education-either positively or negatively. This person could be a teacher, parent or other family member, a classmate, an author, or similar person. How did this person influence or affect you? What difference did this person make with regard to your education?
Option 3: Write a narrative about something that you have learned outside of academics. This could include how to do something at your workplace, how to play a sport or instrument, how to serve the community, how to cook or repair a car, or any similar activity. Explain how you learned to do this activity. Did someone teach you? Did you learn on your own? How is having this kind of knowledge different from academic knowledge, or are the two types of knowledge equally important? Explain your answer.
Your audience is your instructor and your classmates. Try to tell a story that you think would interest your readers, and be sure that you relate what you learned about yourself as a result or how what you learned has helped shape you as a person.
Consider the following when writing a literacy narrative essay:
1) Choose one of the options above to write about.
2) Use pre-writing strategies to generate some ideas about your educational experience person who influenced you, or your non-academic knowledge.
3) Organize your ideas using a cluster or outline.
4) Choose three to six points to develop into paragraphs.
5) Determine the plot outline as shown in Freytag's Pyramid in the Narrative Essay Presentation.
6) Capture your audience's attention at the start of your essay.
7) Create a thesis that includes your points at the end of your introduction.
8) Create topic sentences to begin each body paragraph, and be sure they relate back to the thesis.
9) Choose the tense and transitions to indicate chronologicalsequence.
10) Include dialogue in your narrative.
11) Develop your descriptions with specific details and real-life examples.
12) Restate your thesis in different words in your conclusion.
13) Convey the significance of this event to your audience.
14) Reflect upon your experience and what you learned as a result.
Remember that a narrative essay tells a story and uses many details to paint a picture in the mind of the reader. You are painting pictures with words. Describe everything that happened so that your reader can "see" what took place. Use your five senses; think about everything you saw, smelled, tasted, touched, and heard in relation to the subject of your essay.