3. A “master narrative” is defined as an “overarching story people tell themselves about their experiences in relation tot he culture, literature, or history of a society” (610). According to Alexander, some problems she has with these narratives are that they have “the unfortunate result of gross overgeneralization and act invisibly to structure and define our lives” (610). When looking at my own literacy narrative, I do not believe this to be true… The way we write/what we write about does not define our lives. The stories or experiences that students write about could be something that they overcame, and are not in that same situation anymore.
5. Child prodigy is when someone excels at reading and writing at an early age – put to display for others to see their brilliance. Alexander’s view on the child prodigy is that, “unless children are exposed to school literacy and learn these values at an early age, they will not be academically successful”. In other words, you should be exposed to school literacy at an early age to succeed. Outsiders portray self as an outsider in relation to something else in the story. Alexander’s view on this is that the students who write about this narrative “regret over not viewing them selves as readers or writers” (622). Both of these narratives interested me because I do not come across them often (read about them/write about them). As the child prodigy is more common than the outsider, I still have not read one (that I can remember) in my years of schooling.
7. I believe that the success narrative relates to apprenticeship, and filtering. I feel as though you cannot become successful overnight – as Alexander writes, “Equates literacy acquisition with success, liberation, development…” (615) and I feel as though you cannot reach success through development without the help of others – an apprentice. Along with apprenticeship, I feel as though a student can gain success through filtering. As a successful student learns, I feel as they would be able to filter certain knowledge from some classes and mix it with another class or certain studying techniques.
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