Rationale
This is the first assignment students complete in the semester. It’s designed to be a way for students to reflect on their process of learning to read, write, and speak across languages, and an opportunity to introduce themselves to me and their classmates. Students should learn how to present meaningful personal narratives, should practice genre analysis (analyzing and then imitating model texts), and should be introduced to the writing process (brainstorming, drafting, peer review, etc). We also discuss how to incorporate other languages effectively in academic writing.
Corresponding Readings
I use some combination of Amy Tan’s “Mother Tongue”, Malcolm ‘s “Homegrown Education”, Davis Sedaris’ “Me Talk Pretty One Day”, and most importantly Alexie Sherman’s “Superman and Me.”
ENG 2100T: Writing I
Dr. Brooke Schreiber
Literacy and language narrative essay
Rough draft due: Sunday, February 18 by midnight
Second draft due: Sunday, February 25 by midnight
Final draft due: Thursday, February 29 by midnight
Length: 3-4 pages
In our class readings in the next weeks, we will discuss reading and writing, language learning, and identity. In this assignment, you will write about your own experiences with writing, reading and learning language, and how those experiences have shaped the person you are today. Using our class activities and feedback from me and your classmates, you will create a narrative essay – an essay which expresses one or more stories in order to make a point. You can use our readings (Sherman Alexie’s “The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me”, David Sedaris’ “Me Talk Pretty One Day”, and Amy Tan’s “Mother Tongue”) as models for your own writing.
You might start by thinking about these questions:
- What were your important early experiences of reading and writing? How did those experiences affect the way you read and write now?
- How did you learn the languages you read and write today? Were those experiences positive or negative? How did they affect you?
You can write about learning to read and write in your native language, in English, or in any other languages you know. You should give your readers just enough biographical information that we can understand your story (it may be enough to say where you grew up, or you may need to tell us a little about your family).
There are many ways to organize your essay, but you need to have at least one story (narrative) or multiple shorter stories that are tied together. In class, we’ll compare the readings we’ve done, and make a list of characteristics of good literacy narratives, which your peers and I will use to give you feedback on your writing.