Personal Narrative: My Literacy Journey

My Literacy Journey

“Sponsors, as I have come to think of them, are any agents, local or distant, concrete or abstract, who enable, support, teach, model, as well as recruit, regulate, suppress, or withhold literacy-and gain advantage by it in some way” (Brandt 166). While staring at a blank Word document, re-reading the articles that we discussed in class, and brainstorming for countless hours, I asked myself, what or who was my literary sponsor? In her article, she goes on to state that “sponsors seemed a fitting term for the figures who turned up most typically in people's memories of literacy learning: older relatives, teachers, priests, supervisors, military officers, editors, officers, editors, influential authors” (Brandt 167). From

As I advanced to high school, my teachers took reading and writing to the next level. I was very nervous at first but thanks to the Jane Schaffer format, my written work and comprehension of specific books progressed. The Jane Schaffer format is based on a standard five paragraph essay but each paragraph is based on the form of ‘chunking’. Each paragraph consists of a topic sentence, concrete detail, and two commentaries for a total of around eight sentences. Our teacher provided us with a shaping sheet to outline our paragraphs and combined it to make one solid paragraph. In my American Literature class, the use of in text citations was strongly stressed to support the material. After reading certain novels, our teacher would then give us questions about the book and we had to answer them in the Jane Schaffer format including citations. This formatting made it easier to generate

At first I wasn’t sure if I was ready to take Advanced Placement English Composition in my junior year but I still did. I was truly stressed that my work would be trashy but my teacher supported me in every way. We also had assignments to see if we understood literary terms. One assignment that I found intriguing was when I had to write things that I carried to school and each sentence had to be a literary device. This was one task I enjoyed because it was time consuming, challenging, and also using my previous writing knowledge to create an entertaining writing piece. In the end, I was more confident with my writing because whenever I had an essay due, I would receive feedback about my improvements in my writing. Senior year was more writing than reading. During college application season, I had to write many essays and make my own résumé. On top of that, I had an English class where my teacher would give us a poem and we would have to analyze it. She would then tell us to come up with our own poem and short stories to present to the class. In this class, I learned how to annotate texts and to understand why the author wrote it the way he did. This class also helped me learn more complex words to understand texts and enhance my writing skills.

In conclusion, my parents and my teachers influenced and shaped my literacy journey. It all began in elementary school