Literacy Narrative and Analysis:

Topic Exploration

For your proposal, find three potential topics/experiences/stories to share. List them in your preferred order (first choice on top). let you know in comments which I've approved for you or if I need you to try again. You may type your responses in the boxes.

Literacy Narrative and Analysis PUC - English 10000

Overview

In this essay you will share some aspect(s) of your literacy with me and your classmates. You can focus on one event of your literacy or one pattern in your reading and writing processes. You will choose what to tell us and determine how you want your piece to influence us.

Plan an essay that is at least 3 pages, typed and double spaced. and formatted in MLA. As you work through your writing process, keep all of your notes and drafts. These are required for your writing portfolio.

Possible Aspects (not topics) to Analyze for Your Literacy Narrative

Writing strengths and weaknesses
Your reading process
How you write music
How you write poetry
Your first memory of reading or writing
Your worst memory about reading or writing
Your writing process
Your worst/best English teacher
Reading strengths and weaknesses
Your favorite books to read
What else?

How to Proceed: To begin your literacy narrative, you must think about your relationship to writing and reading. The general problem posed for you in this rhetorical situation is to think about how some aspect of your literacy-past experiences, people who influenced you, your writing and reading processes-has impacted you. Wallow in the complexity of yourself as a reader, writer, and thinker. Then decide what you want to tell us about this and why this is significant. See the prompts below to get started.

Basic Components and Structure:

This piece will contain two parts: the literacy narrative and your analysis of that narrative. Many writers find it easy to compose the narrative yet struggle with the analysis. In analyzing an event or issue, a writer separates that event or issue into its component parts and explains how those parts work together. For example, in analyzing why the experience you had reading Dr. Seuss as a child was so pleasant, you might list the content of his writings, the rhyming, and the connections to people (parents, siblings, teacher, etc...) and places (rocking chair, bedroom, Kindergarten floor, etc...). Then you would explain how all of these parts worked together to create your wonderful reading experience. In other words, you would share as many of your thoughts about how the reading experience was significant.

In your literacy narrative, you will show your readers the significance (your analysis) of the literacy focus you have chosen. For example, if you narrated your writing process, you might analyze how this writing process has made you the writer you are today. Explaining this significance leads you to answer the "so what" question: "So what is the big deal about what you are telling us?" and "So what if your prominent writing strength is organization or that you had a teacher who made you write one hundred times, 'I will not chew gum in class.'?" Because this is the critical thinking aspect of the essay, it can be more difficult. Don't get discouraged. Ask for support. Have a conference with your instructor. Visit a tutor in the PUC Writing Center. Work through the complexity.

Prompts:

1. Who were your earliest influences as a reader and writer? How were they positive or negative? What role did parents, peers, and other adults play in your development? How have the influences since the early ones helped or hindered your literacy? Who in middle or high school was an especially positive or negative influence on reading and writing? What specific incidents are vivid for you?

2. How have you felt about reading and writing? How have your feelings varied, depending on the type of reading and writing you're doing? How have your feelings changed as you've grown older? How would you like to feel about reading and writing? What stops you or holds you back? To what extent is reading and writing an activity that you do for pleasure and stimulation" To what extent is it work or drudgery? What kind of reading and writing do you find boring or difficult? Why do you think this is so?

3. What kind of kid were you in middle and high school? Whom did you "hang out" with? Go back to a yearbook or photo album and see yourself as you were then; then try to develop a "profile" (character sketch) of yourself in relation to the group you identified with. How did the norms and expectations of the group relate to literacy activities and/or school? Do you still identify with the norms of this social group or are you now "moving on"?

4. Consider experiences of informal, unintentional literacy and language learning. Perhaps this experience affected your more formal learning, or perhaps it stands in sharp contrast to your school learning.