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UWP 001-016
J. Houk
Ziang Zhang (Jeff)
ELD Paper 3
12/07/2019
Word Count: 1859 words
The Guide of Literacy Narrative

I. Introduction

What is literacy narrative? How can I write a literacy narrative? If those are the

questions you want to ask, calm down. You find the right place! This section is aiming to

help you clarify what you should write and how you can create a literacy narrative.

a) What is Literacy Narrative?

“Narrative,” a common genre about telling stories, which everyone should have

encountered during their study. “Literacy,” something about literature. That is right. A

literacy narrative is aiming to help you describe incidents in your journey of studying in

literature. However, it is not just about “telling a story.” As an academic essay, it has a

specific purpose if you write for a course, usually a first-year composition course. For

example, my instructor wanted us to “understand how your past literacy experiences

shape your current literacies.” (Houk, 2019)

b) Narrative is only about writing?

Where does this question come from? Before taking the introductory writing

course, I think the narrative is merely writing a story on paper. However, that is not the

case anymore. Today, thanks to the improvement of technology, we can have more tools

and options to fulfill our needs to “tell stories.” Therefore, I think it is worthwhile to talk
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about the term “multimodality.”

“Multi” + “mode,” this is a simple explanation of multimodality. A mode is a way to

present information. Examples of modes are “image, writing, layout, speech, [and]

moving image.” (Bezemer & Kress, 2008) Modes need to be presented by using the

media. Thanks again to technology advancement, we now have better devices with

multimedia that can carry different modes at the same time. For example, the bulky

textbook now becomes e-book; the countless pages of homework now become a section

of the online platform; the hard-to-understand solutions of homework become step-by-

step videos. You are benefiting from new modes and multimodality. Why not apply this

idea to your own writing?

Do consider using multiple modes in your literacy narrative because different

modes can bring different levels of information and help your readers better understand

your work. Also, using multi-modes can improve readers’ interest in your artwork. For

example, you could consider using pictures, audio clips, and even videos to expand the

dimension of your literacy narrative.

II. Step by step

You might sometimes lose yourself during the writing process. A detailed plan may help

you to avoid that situation. This section is going to help you plan your own writing. Our

discussion will start from planning your story, to help you set up a stage that you can easily

develop narrative plots, and your readers can fluently understand your reasoning. Then, I

want to talk about the value of the first draft. Many of you, including myself, thought that
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the first draft needs to be considered “mostly done.” However, some descriptions from

professional writers may prompt you to change your ideas. Next, some ideas, recommended

by professional writers, about the revision process will be discussed. They might give you a

clear picture of what a thorough revision would be like. Finally, I would like to reinforce

some old talking about things that need to be done before submitting your assignments.

a) Planning your story

Picking your story is not difficult because you must be having many experiences in

reading, writing, and learning languages. How to describe your story becomes way more

important for this assignment. Therefore, let us talk about what you should pay attention

to before you create a Word document.

Your story is by you, for you, and about you. Therefore, your “self” is mounted in

your literacy narrative. With this in mind, some researchers pointed out two major

aspects of narrative, “temporality” and “point of view.” (Ochs & Capps, 1996)

Temporality is the background of time of your story, and showing time can help

your readers track the logic and the sequences of events. The sequence of time does not

have to be linear. For instance, as Ochs and Capps (1996) mentioned, “sometimes

chronology is artfully altered for rhetorical purposes, as when a narrator uses flashbacks

or slow disclosures to enhance the dramatic effect.” If you want to write a dramatic

story, a non-linear sequence may help you create special effects; if you want to write a

normal story, linear sequence may help you and your readers keep the track. All in all,

do have a sense of temporality in your story and do pick the time sequence that seems to
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be logical for your story.

The point of view is the most crucial component of the narrative, in my opinion.

You are showing what you have seen, felt, and thought in your story, and point of view

is a collection of those things. By planning your point of view, you are setting up a

stage, that is exclusively for you, to show your story. The setting must be logical and

understandable for the audience. The point of view that you set up should help readers

to figure out the logic behind your actions and responses to the environment.

Those two aspects form most of your literacy narrative. However, due to the nature

of “self,” as previously mentioned, it is hard to cover all the details around the events, as

we might have our focuses when we are experiencing those events. The imperfection of

stories leads us to a term called “the boundaries of the self,” proposed also by Ochs and

Capps (1996), which describe the limitations when we tell stories. We cannot get rid of

this because it is one of the features of narrative and humanity, but we can use other

roles in the story to help us build a more well-rounded scene. As some researchers

claimed, like Ochs and Capps (1996), the narrative can concurrently be “define[d]

selves in terms of others in the present, past, and imagined universes.” Their statement

inspired us that we can use other participants of the events to help us broaden the view

for readers.

b) Writing your first draft

Your first draft does not have to be a reliable, promising work. Many writers

(Lamott, 2002; Sommers, 1993) expressed in their reflections on the writing process that
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writing the first draft is a trial or discovery. Sommers (1993) used the quote, “writing is

a radical loss of certainty,” to describe the process of writing, while Lamott (2002) used

“the fantasy of the uninitiated” to respond to people’s misunderstanding of writing.

Lamott (2002) even used a statement that seemed to be subjective to illustrate her

opinion on the first draft that negative first drafts are always the case for good writings.

Writing the first draft is to help you figure out what do you have in mind and how

do you want to present those materials from your mind. From my own experiences, I

would like to divide into sections. For example, if I want to write the first draft for a

narrative, I would write the cause, the progression, the climax, and the result of an event

individually; then, I would put them together to make them logical.

Writing the first draft is more about the process. It is like gathering all raw materials

for dinner. Other works could be left to the next step, revising, which is our next section.

c) Revising your drafts

If you are thinking about swapping words or deleting sentences, you might feel

disappointed. Students with inadequate academic writing experiences might think that

revision is only about changing words and deleting sentences. Sommers (1980) further

reinforce this statement by claiming that “lexical changes are the major revision

activities of the students because economy is their goal.” Saving time nearly always

means producing less promising work. Therefore, for professional writers, revision is

way more complicated than that. Many writers (Lamott, 2002; Sommers, 1980) agreed

that revision is a multi-process, iterative work, which contains time-consuming

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communications with the texts and repeated rewriting. Students tend to treat revising as

editing, while professional writers tend to consider revising as rewriting.

From your first draft, I hope that you have gathered enough information to work on.

During the revision, you need to treat your writing as a whole and examine its

effectiveness. Things to consider could be the richness of details, connections between

ideas, and relatedness to readers. During the process, your role shifts between a writer

and a reader, back and forth. The whole process can be repeated for multiple times, and

that is why Sommers (1980) stated that revision is “a process with significant recurring

activities.”

d) Finalizing your work

After thoughtful revisions, you can perform your final check. Checking grammar

errors might be necessary at this stage. Then, check your instructors’ assignment

description to see if your format is legit. After you are done with those two parts, you

can submit your work, and make sure that you submit before the deadline.

III. Special considerations

The following part of discussion will help you think beyond this single assignment of

literacy narrative. Have you ever heard people saying, “Your English is wrong,” when they

read you writing? Have you ever thought about a way to track you writing progress? If you

had those two questions before, then it is a good time to read the following sections.

a) Your expressions matter

What kinds of English are you using? You might have encountered that a teacher
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pointed out one of your expressions in your passage and said, “this does not match the

rules in Standard English.” However, I am glad to inform you that you did no wrong.

Your expression matter! Some professors (Horner, Lu, Royster, & Trimbur, 2011) even

give a name for the method to read your work, translingual approach. Every word,

expression, sentence produced by you is a combination of your understandings of the

language, influenced by your social and cultural backgrounds. Your right to use your

English variety at the linguistic basis is also supported by The Linguistic Society of

America, a well-known academic society, because the English varieties you use need to

be preserved.

Moreover, your unique expressions help readers to understand your situations. The

words and the phrases you use highlight your social and cultural backgrounds. Utilizing

your unique expressions can enlarge the point of view of your texts that visible to

readers. Therefore, keep using those unique expressions.

b) Tropes: Good or bad?

Tropes, on this occasion, are referred to as typical identities that students

commonly use. Williams (2003) proposed that when first-year students write about their

literacy narratives, they tend to use several typical sets of roles to portray themselves

against their teachers. The usage of those fixed sets strongly indicates their emotional

orientations in those events. Williams (2003) also reported the finding discovered by

Paterson (2003) that the identities that students use would reconstruct after they

experienced more training in writing for a while.

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Therefore, this is hard to say tropes are good or bad for students’ writing because

the cost is, as far as I am concerned, pretty blurry. However, you may need to keep in

mind that the trend of using different identities in your narratives could suggest the

changes or progress of your learning in literature.

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References

Bezemer, J., & Kress, G. (2008). Writing in multimodal texts: A social semiotic account of

designs for learning. Written Communication, 25(2), 166–195.

https://doi.org/10.1177/0741088307313177

Horner, B., Lu, M.-Z., Royster, J. J., & Trimbur, J. (2011). Language Difference in Writing:

Toward a Translingual Approach. College English, 73(3), 303–321. Retrieved from

http://www.jstor.org/stable/25790477

Houk, J. (2019). Literacy Narrative Project Description. Retrived from UWP 1 Canvas Course

Page.

Lamott, A. (2002). Shitty First Drafts. Language Awareness, (1983), 2–3.

Ochs, E., & Capps, L. (1996). Narrating the Self. Annual Review of Anthropology, 25, 19–43.

Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/2155816

Sommers, N. (1980). Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers.

College Composition and Communication, 31(4), 378. https://doi.org/10.2307/356588

Sommers, N. (1993). I Stand Here Writing. College English, 55(4), 420.

https://doi.org/10.2307/378651

Williams, B. T. (2003). Heroes, rebels, and victims: Student identities in literacy narratives.

Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 47(4), 342–345.

https://doi.org/10.2307/40014780