Define key rhetorical concepts including purpose, audience, and genre
Employ critical reading strategies to understand a text’s content and rhetorical choices
Explore personal experiences with reading, writing, and language through the lens of rhetorical concepts
Engage with texts by summarizing, paraphrasing, and responding
Compose a text using the writing process by drafting, reviewing, collaborating, revising, and editing
Task
Before you enrolled in English 101, you had years of experience with learning in school, family, and community settings. These experiences come with you to the classroom and inform how and why you communicate today. For this assignment, you will write a narrative essay about a significant personal experience with learning that influenced you in some impactful way.
Topic:
For this assignment, we will use a broad definition of literacy as any skills or knowledge in a specific area or discipline. Traditionally, “literacy” means the ability to read and write, but you can also think about learning a language or a new sport, learning how to operate certain kinds of technology (digital or not), learning how to live in a new culture, or how to play a musical instrument. While looking for a topic for your narrative, think about various kinds of knowledge and skills you have: how did you acquire them? What was your learning process? Was there a specific person that helped you learn or influence your learning in some way? How do these skills influence you on a personal level? You can also reflect on the connection between the different types of literacy and your family and social life. Your narrative can focus on a specific event, person, or object (e.g. a significant book you’ve read), or a combination of the three. Your purpose is to present a significant experience with learning new knowledge or skills that has made you who you are as a person, a student, or a writer today.
Your narrative should describe a particular experience, and it should also explain what role this experience has played in your life. Make sure your main point is not too broad or generalized. For example, something like “Learning to read and write helped my life in many ways” sounds like an important point, but it might not work so well because it lacks originality and specific focus (whose life wouldn’t be affected if they could not read or write?).
Finally, consider how your personal experience fits in with the larger context: what kind of issues in our society does it relate to? You can think of political, social, economic, or cultural problems that your narrative can connect to; these connections are what makes people interested in reading literacy narratives.
Directions:
Your narrative should describe your experience, so you need to tell a story. Use descriptive language to create a vivid depiction of the setting, event(s), and/or people (you can describe these things using sensory images, metaphors, similes, etc.). You can include dialogue.
Besides describing what happened, you also need to provide your reflection on the experience. Show your readers why this experience was important to you and how your it connects to larger social, cultural, political, or economic issues.
The introduction should grab the reader’s attention, announce your topic, and indicate how you plan to proceed.
The body of the paper should develop your story and include your reflections and thoughts on the experience you describe.
The concluding paragraph should tie your points together and highlight the significance of your narrative.
The narrative should have a creative title that will grab the readers’ attention.
Make sure your narrative is organized in a logical way and that you provide enough details for your readers to follow your story.
Include at least one multimodal component into your narrative. It can be a picture of the setting or people involved in your story, an image that can illustrate an idea, or even a video or an audio podcast that can be a meaningful addition to the story. You can add this element (or multiple elements) at any point in the paper where it will help illustrate a point. For example, you can use an image on the very top of the first page if that image corresponds to the general message of the narrative; or you can add an image next to a specific paragraph if the image illustrates a specific moment in your story. Make sure to add a caption next to your multimodal element explaining what it is and its relation to your narrative. (See sample student papers for some examples.)
The literacy narrative presents a significant personal experience related to literacy.
Ideas and personal experience are chosen to reflect the purpose and engage the audience.
The literacy autobiography uses narrative and descriptive strategies such as concrete details, vivid language, and an unexpected or surprising element.
The writer makes a clear connection to the larger cultural context and demonstrates the significance of his/her experiences in a mature and insightful manner.
Genre conventions – 25 points
The literacy narrative meets the genre conventions including a specific title, an engaging introduction, unified body paragraphs, a satisfying conclusion, and appropriate transitions.
Choices related to word choice and sentence structure are appropriate for the audience and purpose.
The narrative is free of distracting spelling, punctuation, and grammatical errors.
Writing Process – 10 points
The writer created multiple drafts of the narrative and participated in peer review. Successive drafts of the essay demonstrate the ability to explore and develop ideas, learn from instruction, apply feedback, and self-correct.
Multimodality – 5 points
The narrative includes multimodal components that make a meaningful addition to the text of the narrative. The visual elements are appropriate and not distracting from the text and message of the narrative