My Experience While Writing a Literacy Narrative

My Experience While Writing a Literacy Narrative

Writing this literacy narrative was completely different from literacy narratives I have done before. Before I was asked to write a Literacy Narrative, I knew eventually we would have to write one being that FIQWS is a writing course. I took a look at the syllabus and took into consideration what the requirements were. Initially I wanted to write the literacy narrative on the book A Child Called It. However, I remembered that I had read The Hate U Give ( T.H.U.G ), which is about a current and controversial issue and to me, it seemed like a great idea to incorporate current events in  my writing. Even though A Child Called It also speaks about a very intimate topic, I believed that The Hate U Give is much more relatable. Since, the main character is about my age, it was much easier for me to express how I felt while reading the novel.

I was successful in examining my literacy experience through my evidence. Evidence I included was a quote on  the author’s ( Angie Thomas ) reason as to why her novel was inspired by the incident that occurred in 2009 ( the passing of Oscar Grant because of police brutality ). My use of evidence has changed along with my thinking about the use of evidence in essays. Something I struggled with before was not knowing when to include evidence. While writing the recent literacy narrative, I was able to identity when it was proper to use evidence.

The introductory letter I wrote previously this semester was somewhat different from the literacy narrative. For obvious reasons, a literacy narrative requires background, evidence, and significance. In an introductory letter, background must also be included (information about oneself ). In other words, both writings require background. In addition, the formatting for both writings had to be in MLA format, which is also something similar they both had. Writing my introductory letter allowed me to have a better understanding of how MLA format works. I learned that in MLA format, all of the lines must be used (no extra spaces). Since the  MLA format is the format I will use more often, writing my introductory letter made me familiar with MLA formatting in general. My introductory letter was the first writing assignment that had to be written using MLA formatting.

For my literacy narrative I did not choose to produce-then-assemble it was something I did without noticing. This happened because I wrote my first draft and realized it was disorganized. So, I had to assemble my writing so that the reader does not get lost. Re-organizing my writing was like  taking a breath of fresh air. Having a peer review my writing was a great experience being that four eyes see better than two. In other words, my peer was able to identify errors that I did not. My peer’s suggestions were suggestions that I agree made my writing clearer and more concrete. For example, my peer would point out a sentence and would say,  “Read this out loud” and when I did as she said, I realized my syntax was not correct. I was also told to include more writing about how I felt and how the book impacted. This was a lot of help because when I would re-read my writing I could not figure out what else to write about (I was experiencing writer’s block). In other words, since my peer gave me advice on what I should elaborate, I was able to write a lot more and even reached my goal of writing all the way down to the last line.