Category: ENG123

“A narrative that assumes the more literate one is, the more successful he or she will be” (Alexander 609). In basic concepts, the believes that the more practice and opportunities to express your skills will better your future. It will better the academic levels that you can grow to and it can help you in the future when to something as rigorous as college or something like Medical School. My literacy narrative is compiled of me realizing what skills I had progressed, in just from a simple letter that I wrote when I was in eighth grade. There isn’t evidence to provide considering the fact that four years passed and there wasn’t much to keep up my skill level.

Alexander has highlighted the key concepts of “master” narratives which to her seem to be more orthodox,and legitimate. Contrasting with the “little” narratives which are proposed as “gaze in wonderment at the diversity of discursive species, just as we do at the diversity of plant or animal species”. Master is more common and seen as the aspects that most people can relate to and in a setting where the majority can understand. However the use of “little” narratives take over the whole view point when the calculations from the students are very relatable from the other students. In the paper she mentions a small paragraph from Kristy. She spoke about the factors of not wanting to write anymore. “I couldn’t just let my mind go free. I had to write about what I was assigned. i couldn’t just let my mind go free. The required course materials are what tore my love for writing”. So the item that is supposed to be helping student progress, is whats holding them back.

The child prodigy narrative offers a similar aspect of what Brandt talks about. From the perspective of Alexander, its said that the prodigy is prepared well before they need the skills. “when students portrayed themselves as child prodigies, they conceived of themselves and their literacy abilities as exceptional, highlighting moment when their skills were put on display to amaze and astonish their audience.” (619 Alexander)Putting them ahead academically which benefits them, allowing them to continue these skills in later years. Brandt identifies the sponsor as someone that will help you gain a form of advantage. “… a range of human relationships and ideological pressure that turn up at the scenes of literacy learning” (558 Brandt). In this case its easy to comprehend that the two factors have a lot in common. The child prodigy can’t be a prodigy without a sponsor to get them where they need to be. They need the assistance from a parent or maybe a teacher to help them progress. The parent or teacher is the sponsor.

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Here I highlighted how education = power. When reading about these narratives, the most common narrative was about success, which is what all students aim for. Along with a successful education, you gain power.

Here, the text says that little narratives are told by groups such as women and minorities. My question is, why women and minorities? Why are they subjected to their own “little” group?

Here I highlighted how every student wants success. The success narrative is appealing to everyone despite their social background and can enlist hope, status, income, and reputation to literally anyone – any student.

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I used the orange highlighter to mark the statement I had a question about. I use the yellow to keep track of important information. The blue represents notes that could be important when discussing in class.

 

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Even’s :

2. A conventional story is described as a “Narrative that assumes the more literate one is the more, successful he or she will be” (Alexander 609). What Alexander is implying is that society has this image that students need to be successful in literacy to become successful in the real world, or as Gee was say enter a dominant secondary discourse. In todays education reading and writing can seem almost like a chore. In high school most kids feel as they aren’t able to master an assignment because of all the crazy requirements needed for a paper. Also students in lower education can feel that there success can be put on a hold do to an episode that has effected there literacy outlook. They are held to these traditional standards, but not everyone has a bad experience. When trying to learn about someones literacy discourse they have to express themselves through an writing prompt. Something where they can show what they have mastered while learning where they are emotionally with literacy. Students papers will be attacked for not having the right exact standards which when a students hopes of accomplishing a paper are let down it can cause them to close u with literacy which is what happened with my my senior year. My writing style just wasn’t what was required for that course and it was extremely difficult when my teacher wouldn’t give me the time of day. She acted like because I couldn’t do it to begin with I would never accomplish it. So it was hard to find the light, but like the other examples in the story somehow I was able to regroup.

4. The two types of writing Alexander talks about is “little” and “master”. The main contrast between the two is “The importance of the “little” or local, more specifc, narratives of literacy that contrast with and challenge the master narratives” (Alexander 611). What she is saying is that the “little” writing style is better for a literacy narrative because it expresses challenges which is in almost every literacy narrative that is told. Where as a “master” is expressed differently. It is told to be “like the success narrative, are orthodox and legitimate” (Alexander 611), so it is a story that is true and excepted. Most literacy narratives are not true and excepted they are something that is unauthorized, or not expected to be the same for everyone. For an example Alexander tells us about all these “littles” that people talk about in their narratives, the most common one being victim. Alexander expresses victim as “students wrote about negative school-based literacy experiences that stigmatized and marked them, including being misread by poor or insensitive teachers, having a ‘masterpiece’ ruined by a teacher’s notorious red ink, or being forced to write research papers and read books or critique rather than pleasure” (Alexander 617). As you see this little can be different than a mastered narrative because it does show a true story. A victim story can be told in many different forms and not set to one strict way. 

6. The cultural narrative type that intrests me the most is the victim narrative. This is mostly likely because after reading what victim narrative was and rethinking my literacy narrative I realized that my cultural narrative was a victim narrative. As Alexander states a victim narrative is a “Negative school-based literacy experiences that stigmatized and marked them” (617). In my literacy narrative I discussed how a teacher of mine during my senior year ruined my confidence in writing and would never help. She was considered a sponsor to my lack of literacy success as Brandt would say. A sponsor is “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 556). So as you see my sponsor doesn’t have to be someone that helps they can withhold me as well. My teacher withheld me from trying to ask questions by giving me the thought that because I didn’t come into the course with a well understanding that I never would understand. Although by the end of that course I accomplished getting an above average grade because I tried. I wanted to prove her wrong, so I found the light of the situation.

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While annotating Alexander I found the common themes that have been discussed in both Gee and Brandt. When I saw a cross text relation I highlighted it in orange and explained why it related to the texted. I also did some chunky when needed. Chunky is great when a chunk of text is explaining the same topic that is key to the reading. When I saw key points for the reading or needed to explain something more I would highlight in pink and write in explanation in pink pen. Throughout the reading I did have questions that came up from me not understanding the text or not understand why Alexander was saying what she was saying those questions are blue. There were some conflicts that I found she was was getting at based of culture, so when I came across a conflict I noted it in yellow to stand out.

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This first annotation to me heightened the importance and main topic about the entire reading itself. You can see that Debrah Brandt gives you a good understanding that in order to get anywhere, you’ll need a sponsor. That one person or several people can make or break that path that you choose to go down.  (PG 556 bottom left)

In order to make connections you need to know people, and in this case Brandt talks about the idea that if you don’t have the “correct” financial/political standpoint, it won’t be out of reach, that it’ll be a challenge that can be completed. Although it can make things even more challenging and help them realize it’s out of their hands from that point on. (559 top right)

Where we stand in today’s talk, everything is political, what you say, who you speak to, etc. All these minuscule implications can cause your career to head in the direction you want, or in the opposite. Things like these can destroy it, and Brandt talks about the fact that you must be known. You must fight, and fight hard because its a competition that everyone wants to win.

Reading/Annotations 44 minutes

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1. Brandt’s opening paragraph sketches a history of printmaking. At the end of the paragraph, she uses the term “literacy sponsorship.” Describe the reason Brandt sees printmaking as a site for literacy development. In addition, explain why Brandt finds a paradox in the rise of the penny press.  The information you need is confined to the first paragraph of her article.

Brandt sees printmaking as a good value of literacy because when you put your writing on paper, it is easier to develop your literacy. She ended up finding a Paradox that helped make printing easier to and more convent to people. When words are on paper, it is easier for people to learn and remember.

 

2. Brandt defines literacy sponsors as “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” (556). This is a complicated or multidimensional understanding of the concept. Using examples from Brandt, Gee, or your own literacy narrative (written in ENG 122 and published in Rising Cairn), describe how sponsors can do at least two of these things. Be sure to explain why the evidence from your examples shows that sponsors do what you think your examples show.

Gee is a literacy sponsor because his thoughts about Discourse helps people understand the importance of literacy. He is also very creative in teaching new ways of learning different techniques about literacy.  These new techniques help people understand what literacy is all about. Everyone has there own learning style.

 

 

3. “Literacy, like land, is a valued commodity in this economy, a key resource in gaining profit and edge” (Brandt 558). If literacy is so valued, why might so many people have such complicated relationships to reading and writing, perhaps two of the most important features of literacy?

 

There are many type of literacy. Everyone comes from different backgrounds. Not everyone has a school in their backyard. Everyone learns literacy differently, whether it be from teachers, friends or on their own.

 

4. “Throughout their lives, affluent people from high-caste racial groups have multiple and redundant contacts with powerful literacy sponsors as a routine part of their economic and political privileges. Poor people and those from low-caste racial groups have less consistent, less politically secured access to literacy sponsors – especially to the ones that can grease their way to academic and economic success” (Brandt 559). How might Gee explain the differences between the affluent and the poor on literacy? Be sure to quote Gee in your explanation. It might be helpful to use Branch and Lopez (in Brandt) for details to aid your explanation.

 

Gee explains how the poor learns literacy. He says that it is tougher to learn literacy when you don’t go to school and learn from teachers. If you are fortunate enough to go to school and learn from teachers, it is easier because they went to school to learn how to translate the different techniques.

 

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Brandt explains the literacy printing as way that not only progressed the form of literacy and where it was going direction wise. It added the fact that it took away from the personalization of writing letters, and stories. The penny press took the world to a whole new level, that they weren’t expecting to take.

In the piece that Brandt wrote, she spoke about two different students. Comparing the assistance they had in order to get where they needed to be. For Branch, his sponsors featured the fact that his father had connections to the store where he would go and play video games. From they it went beyond and was used for him progressing his placement in college. He wasn’t held back with financial reasons, or not being smart enough. Branch had all the tools necessary for him to get where he needed to be. On a more personal note, my sponsor was my eighth grade teacher, who required us to write a letter to our older selves. This was used a model to see where I had gotten throughout four years of high school, academically, and what I had achieved personally. It was an excellent bookmark for me to have, and to analyze what can happen throughout that period of time.

This day in age, we find ourselves on our phones, or laptops generally catching up on the latest gossip or newest social media posts. Or in the case of young adults, they are focussed on their work and time. The whole 9-5 aspect where adults work and then come home to watch TV, and maybe watch the news. Each and everyday we do our best to work everything possible into our schedules, not realizing we aren’t taking time to read books, or journal every now and then. Even the little things are allowing the world to change, printed books and printed papers aren’t as common anymore. Technology is taking over, the sentiment of a hand written letter or, picking up the “New York Times” at the corner store is slowly drifting away, and so is reading and writing.

Gee himself analyzes the world from a perspective that in order to make it anywhere you must fit the regulations necessary for a Discourse. In this case he would take the idea that you must take everything that you are given and put it fourth. In general terms you can take the two cases of Branch and Lopez. These two were born in the same year, and lived in the same town in Texas. However their parents had very different jobs that affected their lives. Branch had the best of both worlds and was very fortunate to be raised with nothing holding them back. However, Lopez was assisting not only herself to grow into the young adult she had to be, but to help her father with translation. In the words of Gee, Lopez wasn’t meant to be in the Discourse of school. She never had the connections necessary or the academic support. Lopez needed to attend government funded programs in order to educate herself. She mushfaked her way into the discourse, and made it. Comparing the two side by side you can notice the difference, but she did it. Lopez beat all odds against her, and defied Gee’s perspectives.

Writing time: 1 Hour

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