Basic Prompt As you begin this essay writing process, reflect on your experiences and attitudes about reading and writing.

Transcription

1 Essay One Literacy Narrative Words Basic Prompt As you begin this essay writing process, reflect on your experiences and attitudes about reading and writing. Regardless of our backgrounds, our ideas of literacy often become deeply engrained as good or bad without much thought about to how these views have come to be. As a result, many of us have definitions of literacy of reading and writing that could benefit from a thoughtful and honest close self-examination. Choose a Topic: Please draw from the following as you develop your essay focus: Narrate an early memory about writing or reading that you recall vividly. Then explain why this event is significant to you now. Describe someone who taught you to read or write and explain this person s significance in your life. Identify a book or other text and explain its significance for you in your reading and writing. Narrate an experience with a writing or reading task that you found (or still find) difficult or challenging. Describe a memento and explain how it represents an important moment in your reading/writing development. Then Create a Narrative: Use sound writing and story-telling skills to organize and articulate your story. Make sure to stay focused on your one, main idea. Key Elements Create a well told story. Bring your narrative to life by using concrete and vivid details. Develop your main idea. (make sure you only have one main idea) Develop the significance or affect of your experience Use strong, complete, varied sentences Organize paragraphs in a logical way, using topic sentences Demonstrate effective, engaging, and clear writing State the main idea of your essay somewhere in your introduction, and then make certain that every supporting paragraph relates to and supports that main idea Use concrete, vivid descriptions and focus on a specific event Consider using dialogue between the characters in your narrative, if you feel comfortable Demonstrate growth and improvement from the first drafts to the final revised draft. Proofread! Format See syllabus section: Some Requirements for Essays in this Class. Final Note Develop your essay to its potential. Give yourself time to write this essay and you may find that you ve created a moving, powerful piece of writing perhaps your best work ever! Let me know if you have any questions. I have attached some pretty good student examples below.

2 Student Example 1 Word count: 1050 The Lord Master s Sacrifice He came to me one day, a blonde haired boy, with the brightest green eyes I d ever seen. The man who had formerly been known as Lord Master Boranil revealed himself to me as Linarob. A cruel leader bent on causing harm and suppressing his people became a man with a child-like innocence; a twenty-five year old struggling with his power hungry Council. What started as an experiment give your antagonist at least one good quality- became a turning point in his and my life. My writing moves my life along in phases and Linarob was the start of the phase that would last nearly two years. Linarob and I began our journey together when he revealed to me his compassion for others. I knew then that the role I had chosen for him was not the role he belonged in. Rather than being an evil man bent on destruction or a good man dedicated to stopping that destruction, he showed me two sides; one, the hated Lord Boranil, trapped in his fortress after five years of ignorantly obeying his malicious Council, and two, Linarob, the loved man who snuck out at night to inspire his people and give them hope. I soon realized that this represented a pattern I saw in my life at elementary age. During school I had no friends and I wandered the playground alone; after school I had friends and was liked. I never understood why there was that separation. As many writers know, characters are all products of their creators; all bear the qualities of the writer in some fashion, hidden or obvious. I found that Linarob and I shared an innocence like that of a child; we were blissfully unaware of the darker side of our worlds. He soon discovered that his Council was using his power to kill civilians, just as I soon discovered that people my age were drinking and smoking illegal substances at school. Linarob also shared with me a need in life; the need to feel loved. I found that both of us were so eager to please others that our personal accomplishments meant nothing if nobody noticed. As Lord Boranil he was often somber and depressed, but as Linarob he was vibrant and alive. I realized that I felt these moods as well. After a fight with my parents or when my friends connected in a way that I couldn t, I felt like Lord Boranil. He would retreat to a room in his fortress, gazing out a window, and I would become distant like that as well, focusing on the scenery around me or retreating into my daydreams. When something I did was noticed in a good way I was cheerful and happy, feeling on top of the world just as Linarob felt when surrounded by people who cared about him. At times when we both felt unloved we would meet, either in his world or mine. After a while, like with all my other phases, I began to think of him when I was anxious and afraid (which happened a lot at school). If I couldn t work up the courage to walk into a classroom, he was there beside me, often giving me the extra push I needed to open the door. Soon I began to have fantasies of Linarob saving

3 me from everyday class. He would burst through the door in a dramatic fashion, often saving the school from something nasty in the process of finding me. Sometimes we would have to explain to the police why he carried a sword onto school grounds and that he really knew no better as he was from another world. A friend of mine began to read Linarob s story, and soon she and I connected through it. We talked about it as though Linarob were a person who truly existed as such. He was the topic of our lunch conversations, especially after he was impaled by a sword. Things from real life were somehow related back to the story, to the point where if it started to hail it was caused by Linarob s ice magics. Finally, it reached a point where all I tried to do was write about Linarob, but I felt like I had exhausted my ideas regarding him. Everything I tried to start ended on the first page. I stopped having new ideas and couldn t daydream about anything but the past. I stopped writing. Linarob was still with me, of course, but perhaps too much; perhaps to the point of invasion. I could think of nothing else, and it felt as though I had lost my creative energy. Then, one day, inspiration spoke again. Hardly believing what I saw, I left it alone at first. It couldn t be true. I couldn t do it. After a few days, I realized it was too good. How could I not do it? I sat down at my computer, and began to write. It started with a man in black silver armor, with blonde hair and bright green eyes, dying on the top of a hill, his best friend at his side. He had saved his country and his healer, but he would never see his friend get married, and he would never return to the woman he had just an hour before said he loved. The first few days passed with simple shock. I had actually killed him. One night, as I was lying in bed, it registered and I cried myself to sleep. Two days later, when I was just coming out of my sadness, I sat in the hallway at school watching a couple who always seemed to sit on that same bench at the same time every day. Suddenly, I felt a spark. Inspiration pushed me to pick up my pencil, and I began to write. It was something new this time, a different place than Linarob s home in Loen. I was excited. My energy was back. The stories poured back into my head. Then, I realized something. If I hadn t killed Linarob, would I not still be stuck in that phase, obsessing over details that meant little and got me nowhere? Linarob, the Lord Master of Loen, sacrificed his life so his country could be safe, and he died so that I could move on.

4 Student Example 2 Word Count: 868 Untitled My earliest memories about reading and writing were very unpleasant for me. In a way I guess, you could even say that some of these experiences were even traumatizing to me. It was the first time in my life that I can truly remember feeling bad about myself. I remember trying to learn how to spell my name. It seemed like this was going to be easy enough. Haether. There, I was done. I raised my hand thinking to myself, I was a genius. I m the first one done, I don t need any help, because I ve got this all figured out. Then it came. My teacher told me e comes before a, a common mistake. She asked me to try again the other way, simple as that. It was dismissed as a common error and never really addressed with any importance. I continued this way until about first grade. Almost all of my class work was returned, corrected for me, without help or explanation. Looking back on these situations now, I don t really think that my teachers at that particular school were aware of how to deal with that type of problem. They didn t think that I was dyslexic, because my letters weren t turned backwards. I was just wrong, and I needed to go back and fix it. I also remember the cruelty and disregard of my classmates. Participating in class activities and going to recess was hard for me. I was always one of the last to be chosen for group activities, because no one wanted to work with the slow kid on their team. I actually remember my first grade teacher choosing five group leaders for a reading assignment. After the group leaders were finished choosing all of there friends to work with, I was sitting alone at my desk. Then the teacher asked me which group I would like to be in, a boy from one of the groups actually said, We don t want her in our group cause she s stupid, and she can t even spell her own name! at that point, I got up and ran out of the class crying my eyes out. It was the meanest thing I had ever heard from another person. This moment led to a lot of mixed emotions for me. After I stopped crying I just wanted to punch that kid in the mouth and shut him up. I had enough problems without him making them seem that much worse. I don t remember what happened to the boy that made that comment in class, within days my family and I moved and I changed schools. So on top of being depressed because I thought that I had brain damage or that I was retarded or something. I didn t understand what I was doing wrong, and I didn t know how to fix it. At this point I thought I would never learn to read or write. I became very angry and anti-social and I thought that it went on pretty un-noticed until the beginning of my second grade year. My second grade teacher was Miss Smith. I think she caught on to my anger issues during Math Class. I was exceptionally good at math; but more importantly, I was starting to act like the little jerk that

5 hurt my feelings before. Miss Smith wasn t going to have that kind of negativity in her classroom, she stated, It doesn t make for a productive environment! I was terrified that I was going to get kicked out of school when she told me that she was referring me to a Creative Release Class to help with my anger issues. I found out Miss Smith was right, it helped a lot. After I received the approval for my referral, Miss Smith told me any time I felt angry or sad because I was struggling to keep up with my class, I was to ask her to be excused to see my CR(Creative Release) Counselor and continue my work there with a more one on one approach. I was also allowed to go there when I finished my math work early, so I could do extra hands on activities. I thought they were art projects and games, but before I knew it I was reading second grade stories and books, and participating in the schools Readers Rewards Program. I continued to do well in school with the help of my CR counselors, until we moved again. I guess I did o.k. though the forth and fifth grade, or at least I was able to get myself through it. I started having problems again in junior high and ended up dropping out of high school because the reading got increasingly complicated, and I really couldn t understand what I was reading. I finally went back to school and graduated just after my twenty-first birthday. I still struggle with my ability to focus and comprehend what I, and I think that it amplifies my lack of self confidence in my writing. I truly hope that this class can help me find a path to begin conquering these issues, so that I can move on and become more confident in myself as a person.