Literacy Narrative

Literacy Narrative
Resources for Writing 121 Essay Assignment
Cora Agatucci, Fall 2001

What Is a Literacy Narrative & Why Is It Valuable?

"...I must also be author of my life, and that in choosing which of my memories I wished to foreground and which to forget I was shaping not only my past but also my present and potentially my future."
"Literacy salvaged my life. It is as simple and fundamental as that."
--"My Name's Not Susie...," qtd. in Nancy Thompson

""A literacy narrative is always a great way to begin the ongoing discussion of writing that typically takes place in a 101 class. We have found that the literacy narrative is especially valuable because it allows us to gauge both our students' writing and their attitudes toward writing."
--Laura Ciancanelli and Teri Gil

"...[E]xplore some of the most important moments in your own encounters with language."
Write a "literacy narrative" that retells and analyzes "one important scene, experience, or character
in your development as a reader, writer, or thinker. Devote equal time to both dramatizing the memory and pondering its significance. . . .
"The most important thing is that you fully describe your experience and that you fully explain its significance. It will not be enough to simply relay your experience to us. Instead, you must go one step further and tell us why that experience was significant."
--Teri Gil

"The focus of this first writing assignment is on exploring yourself as a reader and writer by examining an experience that seems to have been important in shaping the kind of reader and writer that you have become. The purpose of the assignment is to relate to your readers . . . a story of some event or experience in your life in which writing and/or reading figure prominently--a story that might provide some insight into the role literacy plays into your life."
"...[T]ell the story of how you learned to read or write, of the formative experiences that led to the literate person you are today. . . . Or . . .
[T]ell about an especially important experience later in your life
that profoundly shaped you as that literacy person. Or . . .
[D]escribe an important educational or non-education experience
that influenced your literacy learning in some way. Or . . ."
[D]o some combination or variation of all these."
--Robert Yagelski.

Literary Snapshots offer "a brief recollection of a revolutionary moment in that student's lifelong literacy journey. In these short pieces, the students sketch out and analyze their own development of reading and writing, capturing one turning point in their writing, reading, speaking, or listening history. This writing works as . . . a way for students to begin describing and reflecting on their individual experiences as readers and writers."
--Literacy Snapshots: Literacy Narratives, Odyssey Project

"Literacy Narratives as Mary Soliday defines them . . . 'foreground issues of language acquisition and literacy' (Eldred and Mortensen 513)," portraying 'passages between language worlds.'"
--Anne Flanagan, qtd. in Bednarowicz and Smith.

"Choose a meaningful aspect of your experiences and attitudes toward writing
and engage in a written examination of it."
"Up until this point you may have taken writing for granted . . . Whether you are comfortable or not with writing, you may never have articulated just why it is you feel that way. You may have had an experience which affected your attitudes and values about writing, yet never weighed its significance.
. . .Inquiring into your attitudes and experiences will help you to identify and articulate the sources of your beliefs and values toward writing. Using writing as a process of inquiry and action could also help you to better understand your own writing practice, its strengths and weaknesses."
--Jeffrey A. Jablonski

"Autobiography is the usual form of the literacy narrative."
"...[D]escribe and interpret one-three moments that you view as significant."
"The point of the literacy narrative is to invite you, as Soliday describes, to write about the past from the perspective of the present, in dialogue with your present understanding. Think about moments in your own history when you encountered the strangeness of a perhaps unwelcome demand from parents, friends, teachers, or others. Consider the moments when you crossed the borders into another kind of language, new codes, new understandings. Consider failures, as well as successes, and perhaps acknowledge enduring disagreements and disappointments."
--Suzanne Clark

"These tend to be personal stories about a writer's experiences with reading and writing, written in a classic essayistic description-plus-interpretation style. We might describe them as musing, or meditative, reports. . . . in the spirit of those we have read by Douglass, Freire, Malcolm X, Rose and Quindlen."
--Julia Copeland.

Works Cited & Online Resources
[Sorry, but several of these links are broken, as of Aug. 2002]

Bednarowicz, Eva, and Eric Smith. "Literacy Narrative." English 483: Revising Writing Center Theory and Practice, Univ. of Illinois-Chicago, Fall 2000.
http://wwwuic.edu/depts/engl/writing/Eng482/482LitNar.htm [accessed Sept. 2001].

Buteau, Edwige. "Flashbacks into Literacy." [Student Sample Literacy Narrative, Instructor Ledden,] 4 Oct. 1993. The Odyssey Project: The Writing Program at Syracuse Univ. http://odyssey.syr.edu/archives/buteau_lit.html [accessed Sept. 2001].
See also Buteau's "Highly recommended" "Elite" and her theory paper "Literacy! Literacy! Literacy!" linked to:
Odyssey Project: The Writing Program at Syracuse University.
Student Writing: Literacy Narrative, Language Ethnography, Theorizing...":
http://odyssey.syr.edu/curriculum/studentwriting.html [accessed Sept. 2001].
Archives: http://odyssey.syr.edu/archives/archives.html [accessed Sept. 2001].

Clark, Suzanne [Univ. of Oregon]. "Literacy Narrative." English 410/510: Literacy Course & Practicum, Summer 2001; English 410/510: Community Literacy, University of Oregon, Summer 2001.
http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~sclark/eng410/Assignment.html [accessed Sept. 2001].
http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~sclark/eng410/eng410.html [accessed Sept. 2001].
http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~sclark/eng410/community.html [accessed Sept. 2001].

Copeland, Julia. "Assignment #2: Literacy Narrative." English W170: From Ovid to Oprah to OS/2: The Meaning and Uses of Reading, Indiana Univ., Spring 1999
http://www.indiana.edu/~ovid99/AST2.htm [accessed Sept. 2001].

Gil, Teri (assignment adapted from David Blakesley). "The Literacy Narrative: Unit #1--Essay Prompt." English Composition 100, Southern Illinois Univ.-Carbondale, Fall 1999. Online.
http://www.siu.edu/~compcomp/GAWebs/TeriGil/EssayOne/unit1.htm [accessed Sept. 2001].
See also:
Ciancanelli, Laura, and Teri Gil. "Unit #1--Detailed Unit Plan for the Literacy Narrative."
[a detailed unit plan]
http://www.siu.edu/departments/compcomp/public_html/compucomp/Prompts/101/Unit1/unit1.htm

Gruber, Sibylle. "Literacy Narrative." English 313: Literacy, Language, and Bias, Spring 2000. Effective Language Education Practices & Native Language Survival [ed. Jon Reyhner], Native American Language Issues [Choctaw, OK], 1990. Center for Excellence in Education, Northern Arizona Univ., 2000.
http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~sg7/eng313sp00/literacynarrative313.html [accessed Sept. 2001].

Jablonski, Jeffrey A. "Project 1: Reasons for Writing." Composition for Science Majors, Engl. 101s, Fall 1999. English Dept. Component, School of Science's Connections Program, Purdue Univ., 1999.
http://icdweb.cc.purdue.edu/~jablonsk/literacy_narrative.html [accessed Sept. 2001].

Theis, Richard. "Literacy Narrative." 1998.
http://www.cloudccc.cc.ks.us/personnel/literacy.htm [accessed Sept. 2001].

Thompson, Nancy. "My Name's Not Susie: A Model for Teaching the Literacy Narrative." The Women in Literature and Life Assembly [WILLA] of the National Council of Teachers of English, WILLA V (Fall 1996): pp. 30-32. Rpt. Online. Digital Library and Archives:
http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/WILLA/fall96/thompson.html [accessed Sept. 2001].
WILLA Fall 1996: http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/WILLA/fall96/ [accessed Sept. 2001].

Yagelski, Robert. "Guidelines for Essay #1: Literacy Narrative." English 494R: Writing and Tutoring, Univ. of Albany-State Univ. of New York, Spring 1999.
http://www.albany.edu/faculty/rpy95/eng494r/assign1.htm [accessed Sept. 2001].

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