Literacy Narrative Final Essay

English 101: Paper #1 – Literacy Narrative

Assignment Sheet

Instructor: Abby Forster

Literacy narratives are an important genre for understanding our individual reading and writing experiences. They also help us reflect on the role of reading and writing in our society. For this assignment you must write your own literacy narrative. In a narrative, the focus is on telling a story about your experiences that makes an overall point. Since this is a literacy narrative, you should focus on telling your story about reading and writing in your own life. Alternatively, you can define literacy as the ability to navigate some kind of system of knowledge. Either way, you should provide your own definition of literacy. You should use many of the narrative techniques we identified in our readings for class: details and description, a sequence of events, dialogue, conflict and tension. (The first two readings from Week 2 are examples of literacy narratives to use as models; student examples will be discussed as well.)

Objective: The goal of this assignment is for you to show that you can effectively communicate a story of your personal experiences with the purpose of making an overall point about literacy.

Length: Your paper must be at least 900 words, but no longer than 1200 words long, not including the Works Cited Page. (A page of 12-sized typed text that is double-spaced is usually about 300 words long.)

Format: Your paper should be double-spaced with 1-inch margins and no extra spaces between paragraphs. Use a 12-sized font (Times New Roman is recommended). Papers for this class must be formatted in MLA style which means each paper should include your name, the instructor’s name, ENG 101, and the date in upper left corner of the first page.  Each subsequent page should also include your last name and the page number in the upper right hand corner. See pages 408-409 in A Writer’s Reference for an example of a paper formatted in MLA style.

Sources: Sources are not required for this assignment. However, if you use any sources, you must include MLA style in-text citations and an MLA-style Works Cited page. See “Documenting Sources” in A Writer’s Reference (beginning on page 370). Also see page p. 412 for an example of a list of sources in MLA style. As always, any sources used must be introduced and properly credited with citations.