As our final major writing project this semester, you will write an autobiographical literacy narrative that explores your emergence as a literate citizen. Broadly speaking, your topic is how you have developed as a reader and a writer through your engagements with language through books and other media. As an autobiographical narrative, you may want to include the following subjects in your narrative: various time periods in your life; literacy activities in elementary, middle, high school, and college; literacy activities in the workplace; your hobbies and personal interests as they relate to literacy; various aspects of literacy including reading, writing, speaking, and other communication activities (not just writing and reading); traditional texts such as books along with non-traditional texts such as films, video games, comic books, etc.; and most importantly, how these subjects shaped, influenced, and affected your literacy development. The goal here is to re-examine your life through the lens of narration and literacy and to bring a meta-awareness to your literacy skills. By doing so, you’ll be able to improve and refine those skills. This reflective activity will also give you a great opportunity to prepare for your portfolio. Your narrative should be between four and six pages. As you generate ideas for this narrative and begin to draft it, consider the following questions: What are some of the key chapters, parts, or stages of your life? What kinds of writing, speaking, and reading did you do during those stages? Who taught you how to write, speak, and read? What role did books play in your youth? Your work life? Your adult life? Your academic life? What role did non-traditional texts play in your literacy development (such as comic books, cartoons, films, etc.)? What influenced your relationship to stories, words, language, and writing? How important was formal education to your literacy development? What other factors – outside of school – influenced you? What role, if any, has writing played in your professional life? What challenges did you encounter when developing your literacy? How did you respond to moments when you realized you weren’t as literate as you needed to be? How did you become more literate as you grew older?
