In this unit, you’ll have a chance to discuss your experiences with language by telling us a story. Some thinkers say humans are storytellers by nature — homo narrans. And “narrative is a spoken or written account of connected events.”

Aristotle (ancient Greek playwright and thinker) said that all stories have beginnings, middles, and ends. Well, yeah. But what that means in practical terms is that we start a story at an interesting point where something in the narrator’s life changed, take the story through examples full of action and obstacles, and conclude it with a “so this is what it means” moment.

There are, of course, all kinds of narratives. We’re going to look at the genre of Language Narratives to learn:

1) what it means to be a genre, 2) how people craft them, and 3) what our own narrative can reveal to us and to others. 

In this unit, you will write about a significant event or events that had an impact on the way you view the ways you view language and literacy. We’ll be reading several examples in class: they talk about specific events in-depth, using concrete, significant detail– and then they explain why those events were important– not just to the writer, but to the reader.  

What story, what narrative, you tell us is entirely up to you. For example, what can your experiences with language tell your audience about the ways bilingualism is perceived in America? Or about the ways we speak differently around different groups of people? Or how language labels us? You want your reader to come out of your narrative having learned something or thinking about things in a new way.

You may want to write about:

  • an event in when you noticed language (either your own or someone else’s)  that was particularly formative;
  • An experience around speech or communication that led you to become the person you are today;
  • the first time you had a profound experience related to language.

Whatever the context you choose from the examples above, you should:

  • Talk about how the event shaped your relationship to communication in general;
  • Talk about how your particular experience relates to some of the bigger social and cultural issues we’ll discuss in class, such as race, Standard Written English (SWE), etc.;
  • Reflect upon how your experience has enabled you to understand something specific about reading, writing, learning, or language AND how that understanding reflects on the communities/world you inhabit.

What will you be graded on? 

  • Your ability to develop an overall point/significance for your narrative.
  • Concrete, significant detail (are you painting us a picture?)
  • Focused event (did you focus on one event or connected, series of events?)
  • Language: Have you incorporated sentence structure and vocabulary that allow you to express the complexity of your ideas in a clear, effective style? This style does not have to be Standard Written English (SWE) 
  • The carefulness of your proofreading and organization You should be able to explain the choices you made.
  • Word count: At least 1000 words!