Please print out and read thePersonal “Literacies” Narrative Essay Guidelines. Then, do some brainstorming! (See the HANDOUTS section of our Course Open Lab site if you want to learn more about approaches to Brainstorming) Afterward, post a reply to the BRAINSTORMING A PERSONAL NARRATIVE ESSAY blog post in which you write one paragraph describing HOW you brainstormed for this assignment and a second paragraph describing YOUR SPECIFIC APPROACH/FOCUS for this essay. Regarding HOW you brainstorm: Did you write a letter? Do some reading and free writing? Draw a concept map? Record yourself talking? Take a walk? Some combination of all of the above? There are many different ways of brainstorming, and I and your classmates are interested in knowing what your process consists of.
Your second paragraph will describe the RESULTS of your brainstorming. Do you now have a sense of what will be the FOCUS of your personal narrative essay? If so, please write a paragraph describing what you plan to write about. If not, that is also fine. Just describe the outstanding questions that you have as a result of the brainstorming process. You may be a writer who needs to start writing a draft before you know what the focus of your essay will be. In that case, drafting is part of your brainstorming process, so please make a note of this in one of your paragraphs about brainstorming!
The first step I did for brainstorm is reading Narrative Essay Guidelines two times. When I read it the second time, I made a note in the margin of the writing. The note is mainly a question about when I started to learn writing and reading. It took me some time to recall how I learned them. I also brainstormed by reviewing the readings we read in the past week. I tried to remember how the writers structured their narrative essays and briefly reviewed the reading What is writing by Prof. Rodgers. Then, started to write down what I brainstormed.
My specific focus and approaches for this essay is to deliver what processes I’ve been through to learn writing and reading. Also, try to make the essay detail as much as I could but it takes time for me to process.
My first step in brainstorming for this essay was writing down all of my ideas down on a sheet of paper. I then read the Personal Literacies Narrative Essay Guidelines a few times just to make sure I completely understood what our focus should be in this essay. I picked the idea that I thought I would be able to have the most to say about. I then did some free writing, just writing random points that had to do with why I love to read. I skimmed over the readings from last week and looked at the Norton Website to see how to structure this essay.
My approach for this essay was to explain how I began to love reading by stating a personal story.
Allison,
Thanks so much for this excellent description of your brainstorming process. Thank you, also, for getting this assignment in by the due date. I’m really looking forward to reading your draft essay.
As soon as I read the topic of this weeks essay I knew exactly what I would write about.I wanted to write about how I learnt to read and how I love writing. I just wasn’t sure if I had enough to write on. I then read both the Personal “Literacies” Narrative Essay Guidelines and the College Writing: Some FAQs About Writing As a Process. While I was reading thoughts of things I could include in my writing came into my head. I jotted them down as I thought of them. I then read the description of this weeks assignment again. After that i just began to write. I wrote for about 2 and a half pages with no grammar or spelling. I then went back to Sherman Alexie’s essay ” Superman and Me” and read it again. After all this I went to read what I had written down before and gathered all my ideas and began to start writing my draft.
Sarah,
Thanks so much for this excellent post. Thank you, also, for getting this assignment in by the due date. I’m really looking forward to reading your draft essay.
How I brainstormed for this assignment is by reading before writing. After reading how to do a personal narrative essay, I start to write down some ideas. If I run out of ideas and I can’t think of anything else I will stop and take some break. I’ll also read something else that is not related to the topic because it might give me some ideas. Next to my hand I would have a pen and paper so that at the moment ideas come up I’ll write it down. I will look on someone else narrative essay as an example to think more clearly of how i would like to do it.
As a result of my brainstorming I’ll get a satisfying work. I draft before I know what the focus of my essay will be about. After collecting ideas, my mind will have a focus of what my personal narrative essay will be about. For my personal narrative essay I planned to write about how I started to read and write. I will tell how other people contributed to me to start writing and reading. As a little girl I was enthusiastic to start writing and reading because I would write letters to my loved ones and read books or poems to them.
Thanks, Maricel! I greatly appreciate how much information you provide about your brainstorming process. I also appreciate your second paragraph, which is both much longer and much more descriptive than most of the other “second” paragraphs posted as part of this assignment. In terms of your consistent adherence to the usage guidelines for Standard Written English, I’m noticing a few things, particularly some consistent issues with verb tenses. Please make a note of this as something you will want to attend to as you edit and proofread your writing.
I’ll look forward to seeing the draft of your essay!
First things first, I re-read “Superman and me” by Sherman Alexie which really took me back to when I first moved to America. I could identify with the author a lot because I was never like any other kids in my ESL class. My desire to fit in and speak the language did not let me fall behind. What I did, however, was a little different from what Alexie talked about. For me it was watching TV and listening to music that got me familiarized with the language enough to be able to read and write. To tell the truth, I have always had trouble with writing until recently, where writing has helped me overcome some personal challenges. I have struggled with the disease of addiction for a few years and writing my thoughts down on paper has helped me greatly in my recovery process. I write journals, I write songs and poems that are basically like vessels that carry more than just words, but feelings onto paper. A lot of times a pen and paper is all I need and I will try to go more in depth with the things aforementioned in the essay.
Thanks, Art! This paragraph seems to be perhaps as much a very early draft of your own essay as it is a response to the GA3 assignment. That is fine; however, it is also worth making a note of. In terms of your specific experiences with learning English, your post reminded me of the poet Charles Simic’s essays about his experiences coming to the U.S. and learning English. I have not been able to find any of his essays about this online–they are collected in this book: https://books.google.com/books?id=UNkKAQAAMAAJ&q=unemployed+fortune+teller&dq=unemployed+fortune+teller&hl=en&sa=X&ei=RxfvVP_YD4HxggSmwIC4Cg&ved=0CCwQ6AEwAA—and I strongly encourage you to take a look at them at some point. If you’re interested in learning more about Simic and his work, you can read a bit about both here: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/charles-simic
I’ll look forward to seeing your draft.
The best way I can think of explaining how I brainstormed for this assignment is “taking a walk”. I didnt literally take a walk but I walked away from the assignment. For me, ideas start to form as I read but do not make much coherent sense. So after I finish reading I usually walk away ffrom the reading and allow my mind to wonder. Somewhere in my brain ideas begin to form and then I begin to write. This isnt as efficient as written brain storming as I reform ideas as I write that may be less than the original, also it can be hard to follow a single train of thought. When that happens I stop again and read through what I have already, forming completely new ideas or regaining old ones a which point I proceed to writing again.