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Essay #1: Literacy AutobiographyENG 101 Professor ApostolidisThis essay is a 2 page narrative essay about your literacy journey. A narrative essay is one that tells a story; literacy is the act of being literate—knowing how to read and write. So a literacy narrative is one where you tell the story of how you became the writer and/or reader you are today.This essay asks you to analyze who you are as a writer and to describe the influences that made you the writer and thinker you are today. There are many factors that contribute to not only our skill as writers and readers, but also our opinion of it, and our desire to do it. Some of those include teachers, mentors, coaches, parents, siblings, culture, religion, and community. Your task for this essay is to analyze how one of more of these influences had a significant impact on not only your ability to read and write, but also your perception of the value of writing and your interest in the written word.This essay should focus on an experience or set of experiences related to writing or learning to write, preferably (but not necessarily) in the context of a classroom or formal educational setting. In effect, the essay should tell a story about an experience related to writing or education that you consider to be important for some reason in your own development as a student. Think about how have your previous educational experiences formed the learner, thinker, and student you are today? Write about how you feel about education, specifically about your own learning process thus far. Has school been a compost of negative experiences for you or a place where you have really learned about yourself? Do you feel that you are as prepared as you should be at this point in your life? How would you change education today based on your experiences? For example, the essay might tell the story of your experiences with a particular teacher who was especially influential in your development as a writer. Or you may want to discuss and analyze how a specific teacher affected your learning progress negatively. The story you tell can be a positive or negative one (or perhaps an ambivalent one), but it should have significance in your literate life.Whatever event or experience you choose to write about, you should tell the story of that experience in a way that enables us to understand the experience itself and gain some sense of why it was important to you. In addition, you should tell the story in a way that conveys some insight into the nature of learning and education that you believe you gained through this experience (or through your reflection of it).Some questions to think about and/or answer in your essay (Remember, you DO NOT have to tackle all of these topics. A good essay can simple answer ONE of the questions below. These are here to inspire you):What does literacy mean to you? How have you been socialized to respond to the written word? As a child, what forms of literacy were promoted in your immediate and extended family, your neighborhood, your schools? What literacy forms were de-emphasized, frowned upon, ignored? Can you identify any particular approaches to writing or reading that grow out of your own ethnic, economic, or religious history? For example: were certain languages or dialects spoken at home, but replaced outside of the home with a different kind of discourse? What kinds of books existed in your household while growing up? Why these books and not others? How did those books get there? Did you engage in reading practices with others (family members, friends, neighbors) or was reading a mostly solitary activity? Was reading something associated mostly with schoolwork, or did it happen frequently outside of school? Did the act of reading differ in these contexts, or was it largely the same kind of activity? What about writing--was this primarily a school-based activity, or did it happen outside of the classroom? Were there periods of your life where you did a lot of reading and/or writing on your own? If so, what did you read, what did you write? How has your understanding of reading and writing changed over the years, from elementary school to middle school, from high school to college? If you are currently working, what kinds of literacy demands do you find in the workplace? ?Let these questions be the catalyst for your first draft of your literacy autobiography. Use this assignment as an opportunity to reflect upon your own personal relationship to literacy, and to tell that story. Remember you can take a broad approach to literacy, which can include reading poetry, hymns, comic books, and writing notes to friends, as much as school assignments.DUE DATESSaturday ClassFirst Draft Due: September 16 (3 copies)Final Draft Due: September 23 ................
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