Part 1: Literacy Experience Account (with my response commentary):

Rose King English 1101 Mr. B 8/21/12 Literacy Experience Account When I was younger I used to consider English class to be my favorite subject because I didnt mind writing and reading. As I got older, however, more pressure was added to the work and I found myself liking it less and less. Throughout school, a lot of my classmates were able to skim through a piece of text and fully understand what they had just read. Ive never been one of those students. I have to completely focus on what Im reading in order to comprehend and remember the information. This carried over into writing and composition. Being a slower reader made me slower at pretty much everything else. When I write I find myself going back to the last sentence and rereading it over and over to make sure it sounded the way I wanted it to sound. My slowness became a disadvantage when I got into higher-grade levels. Another disadvantage Ive always had with writing is my spelling. For some reason I am just horrible at spelling. When I was young everyone always told me to sound things out in my head, so thats what I did. Then, come to find that night isnt really spelled like nite, and for some strange reason they stuck a k at the beginning of the word knife. I think it was when I was in fourth grade when my teacher realized all these ridiculous spelling rules werent clicking in my head and she recommended that I go to a tutor just for spelling. I did this for some time, but after a year or two of failed spelling lessons my mom decided to stop wasting her money and
Comment [AB5]: How did it feel to have the mechanical aspects of writing valued more than the ideological aspects of writing? Did you ever feel like your ideas were not valued? Comment [AB3]: I like how you are trying to set the tone for your narrative. That said, it sounds like you are beginning your narrative with the victim archetype. Is this how you want your reader to view your literacy history? Consider what aspects of your history you may be leaving out of this story. Comment [AB4]: Me too. Comment [AB2]: Do you notice how you are posing very general descriptions about your experience in this passage? Consider how going into more specific details would create a stronger understanding for your audience. Comment [AB1]: Indent your paragraphs.

invest some time in teaching me how to use Microsoft Word. If it wasnt for spell check, I would be lost in the world of spelling. In my previous English classes I liked writing about myself the most. Thats probably because I know more about my life than I do any other subject. Writing about other peoples lives is a whole different story. Unless Im very interested in what that person did with their life, I have no desire to write about it. Once in seventh grade I had to write a biography about George Bush, which is insane. What 13 year-old girl is interested in where the president grew up and what kind of pets he had as a child? Not me. I like to write poetry, but only if it can rhyme. I dont know how to make a poem sound nice without following some kind of rhyme scheme. Writing free verse poetry is probably the most challenging thing to write besides a research paper. Last year was the first year a teacher actually made me complete a research paper and it was the most difficult school assignment I have ever done. I worked non-stop for days on that paper only to find out I was doing it completely wrong and had to start over. Then, two days before it was due I lost my flash drive, which contained my entire paper, every note and every source I ever used. I had to start completely from scratch. After that, I would be happy if I never have to cite another source again. After writing my research paper three separate times, I learned a few things. I realized I should ask more questions to make sure I know what Im doing, and ALWAYS save everything to my computer as well as my flash drive. On top of that, I think that rewriting a seven ten page paper more than once definitely improved my work effort. In the future I will definitely be making sure my work is done long before the due date so I wont have the stress of pulling an allnighter the two days before my paper is due.
Comment [AB6]: What about your experiences outside of school? As of now, it seems that you are only defining your literacy history by discussing school. Comment [AB7]: How does writing a poem differ from other forms of writing? Consider the demands that different genres make on us as writers and the constraints that each genre has. Do you think that engaging with different genres allows us to discover new aspects of our writerly identity? Comment [AB8]: This seems like a rather abrupt conclusion. I feel like you forced a conclusion onto this essay rather than working your way to a state of closure. Slow down. Make sure you ease your audience into closure. Comment [AB9]: Rose, I really enjoyed reading your literacy experience account. In terms of the content, I think you did a great job of providing a broad overview of your opinions, and I really liked that you were attempting to think critically about some of your literacy practices in order to locate your current writerly identity. That said, at times, your narrative seemed to lack emphasis on specific details, and as a result, I saw the broad picture of your development as a writer rather than the specific experiences, literacy sponsors, and cultural contexts that shaped who you are as a writer. Consider how this narrative would have been dramatically different had you focused on telling specific stories about yourself and conveyed the values and beliefs you saw emerging from other experiences. In addition to this, I would encourage you to widen both the topical and tonal scope. Rather than creating a school-centric narrative, consider your full, lived experience, and the context that has shaped you beyond the classroom (i.e. your culture, community, family values, etc.) This was a great start for exploring your literacy history. Keep up the work, and I am confident that you can learn a whole lot more about yourself as a writer. I look forward to hearing more about your literacy experiences soon. Sincerely, Mr. B