English essay

Rough draft due Thursday, February 22

Final due: Tuesday, March 1

2-3 pages, typed and double-spaced Times New Roman font

LITERACY NARRATIVE

ASSIGNMENT GUIDELINES

A Literacy Narrative is a story about an experience you have had with reading, writing or language. As you begin this essay writing process, reflect on your experiences and attitudes about reading and writing. Some of us have negative experiences with reading and writing that have affected the ways we feel about reading and writing as adults.. For others of us, reading and writing are treasured skills that come out of a childhood fascination with language and self expression. Some of us have experienced the strangeness of language in a foreign country, while others have sat in a writing classroom and felt it little different from a foreign country – a place unfamiliar and remote. Regardless of our backgrounds, our ideas of literacy often become deeply engrained as good or bad without much thought from us as to how those views came to be. As a result, many of us have definitions of literacy – of reading and writing – that could benefit from a thoughtful and honest close self‐examination.

Topic Choices: you may draw from the following as you develop your essay focus (or you can come up with your own):

Learning to read or write

A book that you really love

A writing assignment that you really enjoyed

A time when you doubted your writing ability

A book that changed your perspective

Learning a new language

A challenging writing assignment

An experience with a reading/writing teacher/class

Key Features / Literacy Narrative

-A well‐told story. Bring your narrative to life by using concrete and vivid details. Details can bring a narrative to life for readers by giving them vivid mental images of the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and textures of the world in which your story takes place.

-Narrative’s significance. Make clear why the incident you narrate matters to you now by explaining its significance.

-Use concrete, vivid descriptions and focus on a specific event.

-Consider using dialogue between the characters in your narrative.

-Even though this is a story, your paper will still need paragraphs, so everything doesn’t run together.