English 1101
Literacy Narrative Project
Readings:Â
Eudorah Welty: “One Writer’s Beginnings”
Amy Tan: “Mother Tongue”
Keith Gilyard: “Voices of The Self” (excerpt)
Assignment:
In this unit, we are reading narratives about a few authors’ important, formative experiences with reading, writing, and education. They all have stressed that these experiences went on to help shape them as writers and individuals. I now want you to write about your formative education. Think about your beginning experiences with writing, reading and the education that you received and write a narrative that expresses this to the reader.
The assignment will be in two parts:
First Reflection Due 9/3
The first part (25% of full grade) is a short reflection (250-500 words) about your education.Â
 Ask yourself how did your education affect you? Was the classroom experience positive or negative? Were there situations that could have been handled better by your educators? Were there any outside-of-the classroom education opportunities that shaped you? Do these experiences continue to affect you till this day?Â
First draft due 9/17, Final Draft 9/24
The second part (75% of your full grade) is the narrative. After you have reflected on the above questions, I then want you to think of one educational experience that shaped you, and write 750-1000 words about this experience. If you need help, look through the texts we have read again to help you formulate your narrative. Â
Note: We will be having a peer review on 9/17 so it is very important that you attend this day. If you cannot make it to the peer review you mustÂ
Grading:
This assignment will be graded with the rubric on the syllabus I gave you the first day of class, however since this is a personal essay you may write “informally.” The stronger paper will focus on detail, organization, and reflection.
Format:
The final essay should be double spaced, 12pt. Times New Roman font, and in MLA format. If you have any questions outside of class about MLA format please visit Purdue Owl online as I have pointed out in class and it will show you how to properly format your paper.
*If you need help, feel free to contact me by email. I would be more than happy to answer any questions before or after class in addition to my office hours . Â
Hi Patrick,
Reading your assignment helps me understand your comments on my assignment and helps me see another format I could take.
Your instructions are very clear, as is the breakdown of the grade. I’m wondering what motivates students who don’t find their educational or literacy background particularly inspiring to write about, either positively or negatively. I don’t know if you’ve used this assignment before–if you have, how have your students engaged with the question? Do you find that the initial short writing assignment is enough to get them started in a meaningful way?
I noticed in your assignment that you ask students to look back at their readings to help formulate their narratives. Do you see any value in asking students to do anything more directly with them, such as referring to them in their writing, or using a particular approach that one of the authors uses? I wonder if this could be a way to get students started with some of the other learning goals about making connections to others’ ideas and writing (sorry, I don’t have the SLOs in front of me, so maybe I’m getting that wrong). I don’t know if you ask students to write a reflection, but one version that comes to mind would be to ask students to identify the points in their narrative that were inspired by the readings for the unit, or that compares theirs with one or more of the three on a given aspect. That might be a way in to writing about genre, like Carrie asks us about.
Hey Patrick!
Maybe I’m not reading this assignment correctly (I’m a bit tired today), but I’m a little confused about the two writing assignments, since they seem very similar. I get that you’re having them think generally and then narrowing down, but it took me a second read to understand that. I’d suggest you spend a bit more time explaining that in your document or think about a way you can a) make them more distinctive or b) combine the two into one assignment. Perhaps you’ve assigned this in the past with no problem, but I wonder if your students will have a hard time differentiating the two. Perhaps you could ask them to talk about a positive and a negative experience, and ask them to analyze what made them so?
jdp