Writing Task Four

English 100

Task Four:  “Literacy Autobiography”

Overview of Purposes:  Learn something about yourself as a person as well as a reader, writer and student. Describe and reflect upon your own educational history.  Produce well-supported and thoughtful discussions. Incorporate other’s words, ideas and experiences into your own writing. Strengthen your critical thinking, reading, writing and editing skills.

Reading Assignment:  The essays you will read for this unit will help you to think  about and reflect upon your own stories and provide a foundation for your task paper. The authors recall significant stories in their life dealing with both their difficulties and achievements in regard to reading and writing and recall the history of their own education.

Getting Started:  In order to be   a successful college student, it is vital that you reflect upon not only the experiences that have shaped you in the past few months, but all of your past experiences, both good and bad, that have shaped you as a reader, writer, student and learner. Think about your past as well as the past of the authors we have read and reflect upon your educational history and how it has affected your educational present. You can also use and develop ideas and material from Task Three in this task paper as well. Be sure that you also make this exploration a useful one that will help you in the course of your college career. Think about the following:

·      What stories come to mind when you think about your education? What obstacles have you faced in learning, reading and writing? Have the obstacles been in the classroom and perpetuated by the teachers or in your home and personal life? Did you overcome or give into them? Think about the conflicts and obstacles Douglass faced. What achievements and milestones come to mind? How did they make you feel? Can you compare your achievement  and empowerment to Jordan’s? Can you find any similarities or differences between your stories and one or more of the authors’ stories?

·      What are your earliest memories of reading, being read to or writing? Recount them. Can you make any comparisons or contrasts to Welty’s memories? Have your definitions stayed the same or changed? Compare and contrast your definitions to one or more of the author’s definitions.

·      What about your present educational story? Is college what you expected? Have you learned or gained anything? Have your perceptions of learning been changed or challenged?

Writing Assignment:  For this last writing task, you will write a “Literacy Autobiography” in which you will reflect upon and assess the reading, writing and learning you have done throughout your lifetime. In this autobiography, you can focus on one specific event or time period or you can chronicle a large part of or even your entire educational history. In addition to narrating and describing these events, you will also explain their significance – you will explain how those certain events shaped your attitude towards reading, writing and learning in past as well as how they have shaped you into the reader, writer, student and learner you are today. Your essay can discuss negative and/or positive experiences and attitudes. You will use your past  experiences  as well as the texts read in this section as support and illustration for your ideas, opinions and conclusions.

Format/Organization:

Introduction:  Create a thoughtful and interesting introduction with a focused thesis statement. Perhaps you want to open your essay  in a more creative way with an anecdote. However, even if you choose this approach, be sure your introduction also provides your reader with a focus and thesis (e.g. if you will be comparing your experiences to one or more of the author’s, you will need to briefly discuss both and make the connection in your introduction and thesis).

Body paragraphs will:

·      Be unified, cohesive and developed (topic sentences and supporting details).

·      Support your opinion/thesis throughout your body paragraphs with relevant, persuasive and effective material and information (personal experiences, anecdotes and observations, information/passages/quotations from one or more of the texts, passages from your own writing).

·      Explain and discuss the significance of each anecdote, experience and quote.

·      Include profound and well-supported reflection.

Conclusion:  Create an interesting and strong conclusion  that gives a sense of closure and answers the question, “So what?”

Documentation:  Document your use of borrowed material according to MLA guidelines (e.g. parenthetical documentation within text and a works cited page at the end). If you use examples from your own writing, be sure that all of your quotations are correctly documented using quotation marks.

Editing and proofreading:  Editing and proofreading skills will be crucial to this writing task. Sentence structure and grammar will be correct, sentences will be more varied and complex; surface errors will be few.

Requirements:  This writing task will focus heavily on organization, structure and development of thought. This writing task must be word-processed, spell-checked, well-edited, at least three full pages in length (e.g. not including the works cited page) and must adhere to MLA guidelines. This writing task must also have sufficient and relevant support from your own experiences and observations as well as from the texts read in this section.

** If you do not meet all of the above requirements, you will not pass this writing task.