Abstract

A literacy narrative enables us to reflect on reading, writing, and language experiences that shape a part of who we are today. In my literacy narrative, I talk about someone who taught me how to write in a clear and concise manner. In the narrative, I share specific moments in my life in which my brother was the someone who helped me to greatly improve my writing as well as my speaking. I reflect on how these specific moments were beneficial for my future in literacy. I talk about how these specific moments were occurrences that changed my life for the better.

Essay

I feel like other people believe this question of who has impacted their literary development has an obvious answer: their English teachers. However, I won’t follow this trend of answering the question with the same response. In my opinion, someone who has impacted my literary development is my older brother. As the sibling who is four years older than me,  he has more knowledge and experience in the arts of writing and speaking. I think he is a credible person in terms of literacy and speaking because he was the president of the speech and debate club and the vice president of the student government at his college. As a leader with these positions he is often asked to present at ceremonies or club meetings. In order to present audiences with something, he must first need to write up a speech. This is why I see him as a viable candidate who has impacted my literary development.

One particular experience that I can think of was when I was writing up a paper for my chemistry class in my senior year of high school. This paper just happened to be the main lab report that was a big percentage of the marking period grade and it was due the next day, so I tried to take this assignment seriously. When I made the effort to sit in front of my laptop with my chemistry notes and the rubric for the lab report, I didn’t have the urge to work on it probably because of senioritis, or my lack of motivation to do schoolwork. Instead of starting it, I ended up on YouTube with two clicks of my mousepad. My brother, having known that I had something big that was due the next day, asked me if I had anything that I had to do right now. My mind was telling me to use my mouth to say no but my facial expressions implied otherwise. Inevitably he found out and the first thing he did was yell at me. In his own eyes, he believes that he can talk sense into people by means of hollering and yelling. In this case, he was correct because ultimately, he urged to close my tab on YouTube, open Microsoft Word, and start working on my lab report. 

The lab report was equivalent to writing a 2 page English paper for the reason that you have to write a thesis, abstract, observation paragraph, data analysis paragraph, and a conclusion paragraph. Yes, it was indeed a lot of writing for a chemistry class. Anyways, I told him the topic of my lab report and he happened to know about it since he was taking chemistry that semester in college. Nevertheless, it wasn’t his knowledge on chemistry that helped me to get a high grade on the report that normally had an average of 60s and 70s, but rather it was his suggestions and advice that helped me write a great lab report. As was stated before, this lab report was like writing a short 2 page English essay so the sentences were to be concise and straight to the point. The problem that my brother figured out reading my previous lab reports was that I repeated ideas and thoughts. In other words, I would state the same thought in one part of my paper and repeat it unintentionally in another part of that same paragraph. In addition, he figured out that I have a limited vocabulary and so I would repeat the same words, such as “But” or I would use vague words such as “things.”. He strongly pushed me away from typing those two words in my lab report. 

He wasn’t an English teacher who just made comments and left you be. Instead, he verbalized those comments to me and gave a sentence by sentence commentary with him making me edit if anything was off about the flow. The night was young as my brother and I worked on my writing for this lab report for hours. I started the report at 4:00 pm, and we polished it and submitted the report by 12:00 at midnight. There was so much more than just him just commenting on my writing. He also gave me articles to read quickly from c&en, the chemical and engineering news. They had one-page articles on various scientific topics like solar energy or on wetland microbes. But the reason why he gave me those articles to read that day was because of how the authors of those articles expressed their ideas clearly in a page. He didn’t want me to write 10 pages on my lab report where I would fumble through the same ideas over and over throughout the paper. Instead, he wanted me to write my lab report in 2-3 pages, full of ideas and thoughts that are clear and not reiterated again.  

Looking back at that experience, I am thankful for my brother for being the sibling that he is, to take time out of his day to help a brother who hasn’t done much for him as of yet. I am appreciative of the fact that he taught me a couple of skills that I really haven’t practiced in my English classes in high school. It brings me to the assumption that English classes don’t really teach everything there is to know in terms of writing. No one knows me better than my brother and so he knew which skills I had trouble with, such as expressing my ideas and thoughts clearly and concisely. He knew that I’ve written papers with a higher number of pages than it needed to be. With the articles he had given me, I not only obtained a better idea of how to write with clarity but it also improved my jargon. Yes, the word “jargon” was used. This is when you know the articles did their work. I believe this experience really shaped how I write now. I have come to a point in my life where I have to write many papers and so I believe that I can now activate these skills for higher performance. I believe that this experience can help other people with older brothers or sisters realize that they should look to their older siblings for improvement in literacy since they have more experience in the arts of writing and speaking. They may uncover ideas and concepts to you so you can familiarize yourself with them and apply those skills the correct way. With an older sibling helping you out, you can have a head start in learning more about literacy in comparison to other kids your age. From this experience, people need to realize that they should use their older siblings as a database or library if they need further insight on a topic. 

Cover Letter

In this phase, I learned about literary narratives and how they are experiences people have had with reading and writing. It was very beneficial to go over Selfe’s text as well as Norton’s text on literary narratives because these texts exemplified what a literary narrative should be like and what objectives the writer should accomplish within the narrative he/she is writing. Literary narrative was an important term to learn about at this time because this assignment was on writing a literary narrative. In class, the professor urged us to write with vivid details because with this, it would bring the experience to life for the reader and helps them imagine the narrative in a better way. Because of this, I was able to write this assignment with the intention to include descriptive language. I believe that the concept of the rhetorical situation impacted my writing practices the most. Within this concept it consists of the author of the text, the context, the author’s intended audience, the author’s purpose, and support for his/her arguments. I feel like completing the rhetorical situation, especially figuring out the purpose of why the author is writing, prompted me to gather valuable information and produce writing that is more organized, coherent, and straight to the point. I am confident in thinking that the assignment from the first phase has helped me develop strategies for drafting, revising, and editing.  Since my professor required 3-4 pages for this assignment, it was a task that needed preparation and so I think this assignment forced me to think and come up with a draft that would be revised and edited by classmates and the professor. For example, in class, our professor made us read each other’s drafts and edit and comment on each other’s works so that our paper would be improved.