Word Length: 1200-1500 word

Percentage of Total Grade: 20%

Workshop Draft: February 28, 2024

Revised Draft #1: April 1, 2024

Description

This project offers you the opportunity to reflect on your personal relationship to literacy by telling a story about your literate communication practices in a discourse of your choosing. In effect, you will narrate a set of interlocking memories that together speak to your literacy in the conventions and practices of a discourse community. I ask you to begin this process by presenting three potential choices to me for feedback before selecting one as the focus of your literacy narrative.

In composing your literacy narrative, pay credence to concrete moments in time where you recall advancing your working knowledge of the discourse used by your chosen community. Keep in mind the narrative arc of your learning process, and how you worked with a literacy sponsor to develop your literacy through the social practices and discourse conventions used by that community’s practicing members. Remember, in other words, to illustrate the progressive growth of your working knowledge and skills, with a consistent focus on how your literacy has taken shape over and across time. Narrated memories should be logically sequenced and relational in how they build upon each other, leading to the present moment in ways that represent your literacy journey and its bearing on future learning experiences.

While you are not required to use multi-modal content in your literacy narrative, I encourage it wholeheartedly. Experiment with the process, be bold, be creative, and above all, have fun.

Prompts

• Literacy Sponsor: Did I work with a literacy sponsor when I first acquired my initial literacy in this topic? How might this person have introduced me to the discourse community of my topic? How did they advance my working knowledge of discourse conventions in the process? How did I since use these conventions in ways that strengthened my literacy in this discourse? In retrospect, how has this individual ultimately driven me to learn more about this topic?

• Discourse Community: With whom have I notably discussed this topic in the past and when have I recently joined in conversation with members of its discourse community? How comfortable did I feel recently engaging with this discourse community compared to when I first acquired literacy in this topic? Can I recall concrete moments when I might have felt tentative or unsure of myself when contributing to that discourse community? How have these memories built on one another sequentially and in meaningful, constructive ways? Looking back, which memories are seemingly most significant to my working knowledge of this topic and why might that be the case?

• Growth Mindset: How could I learn more about this topic going forward? How might I engage with new and more diverse members of its discourse community? How might I attempt to widen as well as deepen my knowledge of the conventions tied to this topic? How can I imagine new possibilities regarding my literacy in this discourse and why does such unrealized potential matter to me at all?

Rubric

• Narrative (35%) Do you tell a compelling story with realistic interactions, sensory description, and vivid details that help drive your audience to keep reading? While you may include reflective writing about the topic for the assignment, do you avoid clichés, generalizations, and vague reflections, and instead focus primarily on one particular moment or example that captures the value of your ongoing literacy in the discourse of your chosen topic? Do you move between specific memories in ways that are interlocking and relational, and which reflect the progressive growth of your literacy over time? Does your narrative conclude on a note of possibility regarding how you might imagine yourself learning more about this topic? Do you reflect on the imaginative possibilities of your growth in an attempt to push the boundaries of your current working knowledge?

• Focus/Analysis (30%): Is there a discernible argument and/or urgency to your narrative? What insight does it offer about the ongoing development of your literacy practices? How effectively do you interweave reflective and analytical thought into the narrative progression of your literacy in the topic? Do you use concepts and key terms from the course text such as discourse, literacy, literacy sponsor, conventions, and discourse communities to provide an analytical component to your piece? How thematically relevant is your literacy narrative to the course theme of imagined futures? Do you exemplify a growth mindset by making reference to the tools and techniques of futures thinking, while making sure to explore your own horizon of possibility at the conclusion of your narrative?

• Organization (20%): How clearly and intelligibly do you organize the narrative progression of your paper? Is the sequencing of your narrative read as coherent and intuitive? Does your paper maintain consistent transitional logic between and among each paragraph? Do you structure your paragraphs with cohesion, and avoid jumbled or otherwise convoluted subject matter?

• Style, Grammar, and Editing (10%): How precisely have you edited and proofread so that no grammatical or spelling errors detract from your narrative and compromise your credibility as a writer? Does your syntax and diction carry the content of your prose in clear and deliberate ways? Does your writing broadly adhere to the standard academic conventions of usage and punctuation?