The Literacy Narrative

In most writing courses in American universities, some sort of personal writing has become standardized as a way for students to take a personal stake in the class and as a method for instructors to learn more about the lives that students lead beyond the classroom. Students often jump at the chance to write in a style that comes naturally to them and to narrate the events that have formed their identities and personalities.

However, some educators have questioned the learning potential of such writing assignments. In a course that, at face value at least, is premised on “academic” writing, what possible purpose can personal creative serve? The personal narrative essay, frequently assigned at the beginning of a term, most often feels like a throw-away assignment before the real work of writing in academic literacies sets in.

Teacher-scholars working in composition/rhetoric studies have tried to figure out ways to maintain the student enthusiasm often generated by personal writing while at the same time asking to students to develop meta-cognitive skills regarding their composition practices that will serve them down the road. With this goal in mind, a form of personal narrative writing, known as the “literacy narrative,” has become standard practice in many first year writing course across the country.

Unlike memoir-based forms of autobiography, the literacy narrative prompts to students to reflect critically on their lives through the lens of language and literacy. In this sense, the goal of the literacy narrative is to have students begin to bring the reflective analytical attention to their composition practices starting with the composition practices in which students already engage in everyday life.

This, no doubt, is a broad learning objective. But its broadness allows both instructors and teachers to shape the assignment to their own areas of expertise and interests. For example, a theme-based writing course premised on reading New York City could ask students to think about the different language ecologies that they encounter on a daily basis, the subway platform for the F train, ordering coffee at a deli, the Baruch college classroom.

A course with a rhetoric focus could ask students to use the literacy narrative to reflect on the daily ways by which they make arguments and respond to them, at home, with their friends, and in work environments. In both of these examples, the goal remains the same: students begin to use reflection on everyday experiences in order to seem themselves as already extremely proficient language users and rhetors. This type of learning outcome can be especially helpful to students for whom the writing classroom has consistently been a place of linguistic struggle, since they bring with them to the classroom language repertoires unrecognized as legitimate in institutional settings.

Having students reflect upon the language and literacy practices that they already have in hand can begin to build a crucial link between the classroom and everyday life. In the sense, students can view the literacy practices that they learn in a writing course as an extension of their daily practices instead of something completely alien to them.