ENG181.01. Spring 2021. Emory University
So today was Chinese New Year and this will be the first time I will have spent it without my family. One of my favourite things about CNY was the “red pockets” which is a custom where money is given inside a red envelope and exchanged as gifts during the festivities. In my combophoto, I combined a picture of a chinese red pocket with a Canadian $50 bill which is also red. I guess this says something about my unique Chinese-Canadian background that I am proud of.
I chose my skateboard picture because I rode my skateboard to the library, and I thought it would be a good image to use. I chose the red car image because I want the car to be the top half of the image, with the skateboard being the bottom half of the car. Also, I edited these images on February 12, which is Chinese New Year, and red is a symbolic colour for Chinese New Year. I did not know how to use Adobe Photoshop, so it took me a long time to learn how to use it. That was the main challenge that I faced when I was editing the images. The final image shows that cars are not the only mode of transportation, hence my skateboard. There are a lot more modes of transportations in addition to cars, and some of those are less harmful to the environment.
The free write was definitely helpful as a start for the essay. I have not done a lot of writing since the end of last semester, so writing about something personal and interesting was a great way to get back into it. The writing process for the two were similar. In my head, I planned out the style I was going to use and came up with a few ideas. After, It easily translated to paper. Before this assignment, I didn’t realize how much knowing the grammar rules improved my writing. It is obvious, but I never really gave it any thought. Nothing about either writing assignment surprised me. I think about those memories frequently. The most interesting sentence would probably be the last sentence, when I am talking about my brother. The sentence reads “How, under water, he is the same as anyone else, and, above water, he is just trying to be understood.” This is impactful and the heart of what I wrote about; therefore, I think it is the key takeaway point.
Literacy Narrative here
While writing my personal literacy narrative, I couldn’t help but use it as a time to reflect on the events that have sculpted me academically. Looking back, I think my past is an accurate reason for why I write the way I do. At first, I did not know which event to emphasize or which was the most impactful. Now that the narrative is complete, I can clearly see that all those experiences are to a puzzle, and my writing ability now is the result. Of course, I still have plenty of developmental phases ahead where I intend to grow from my current self.
As I continue to venture away from creative writing, I have less opportunity to express my creativity. This assignment allowed me to reminisce on my past while writing about the one thing I probably know the best in this world: myself. Both the creative writing style and the opportunity for creative expression will be missed as I continue to write more for my career and less for myself. As a result, my appreciation for any creative outlet form has increased.
This assignment made me feel several different emotions, among them some stress and realization. In my narrative, I wrote about one of the first books I ever remember reading, how I spent most of my time as an elementary student reading to keep up with reading logs, and how I feel like I barely have time to read for fun now. I also wrote about how I am not the most fond of writing since early on, especially when it comes to writing about myself, but yet will end up past the word limit and struggle with cutting back—which literally happened with the assignment itself and still went about 15 words over the limit…
I don’t know if it was because I did not find a way to incorporate my freewrite from the pre-writing exercise or if I simply did not have words to spare but that freewrite did not make the cut. The pre-writing exercise did seem helpful while I was listing out the memories and doing the 20 questions for one of them, but then the 10-minute free-write just did not feel like enough (or maybe I am just a slow writer, still holding back from just fully freewriting, worrying about how to word things). My freewrite did not go much past half one page and I think it was simply not enough detail including any of the information from the 20 questions, so it felt like a bummer and I felt like it was cheating if I went past writing for 10 minutes. Once I started writing my narrative though, I actually just ended up incorporating a few different of my other 10 memories I had listed, so in that sense the pre-writing exercise definitely helped.
Writing my literacy narrative was certainly an enlightening experience. Prior to this, I had never taken the time to ponder about the experiences that shaped me into the reader and writer I am today. The freewriting exercises really helped me in identifying the most memorable events from my life relating to reading and writing. With those memories in mind, I explored the origins leading to the birth of my view that reading and writing are a chore, an unpleasant task. I also examined the more recent discovery of my love for rhetoric.
Normally, I am not too self-conscious when I am writing, but this particular assignment made me realize that I have a bad habit of revising and editing as I write. I say bad because it really interrupted my thinking process. My mind would get stuck on one sentence or one paragraph, trying to perfect the diction and syntax. By the time I was done editing, I had already forgotten what I wanted to say next, so I had to waste more time re-brainstorming my ideas.
Looking back at my narrative, I believe the most eye-catching sentence is “Reading and writing are a chore.” I personally have never heard someone call reading and writing a chore, so I think a bold statement like this would certainly pique a reader’s interest.
link to page: https://martineng181.wordpress.com/literacy-narrative-part-1/
I think this exercise, as cheesy as it sounds, made me realize new things about my writing style. Moreover, I think I gained insight in what kind of “learner” I am. I have realized that I have been more of a visual learner since my early years. My X-pages activity is full of many experiences of me discovering writing. After writing all of it down, it was suddenly very clear that the thing that they all have in common are that I have been inspired by experiences that involve world-building and the visual mediums.
My writing process for this narrative started by identifying the major “eras” where my attitude towards writing has changed. I mainly focused on elaborating on certain events with as much description as I can and adding my own analytical comments reflecting on those experiences. It was strange to do the freewriting exercises at first because I felt almost guilty with the amount of freedom I had with with the assignment. The free writing activity influenced the essay I eventually wrote because when I started writing the essay, I remembered to enter the mindset that I had while doing the x-pages assignments.
I think a reader would think that my statement about how the 5 paragraph essay makes us nearly identical “clones” in english class would be interesting. They may find that when they remember the times when they have read a peer’s essay on an assignment that the only differences are often word choice and order of arguments made.
Side note: I am really liking the “blog” format of many of our assignments because it feels less claustrophobic.
Please click on this hyperlink to be redirected to my literacy narrative 1 page.
When I was writing the literacy narrative, I kind of just poured my thoughts onto paper without really thinking about what I was writing. What caused this was the free-writing exercises. The exercises were great for brainstorming and was my first time trying it but definitely won’t be my last. To be completely honest, the exercises did not seem to help during the whole process, but when I was actually writing the literacy narrative, the benefits were shown evidently. A lot of what I wrote for my literacy narrative was from answering the free-writing exercises and I’m guessing its because the questions forces you to remember more details of the reading/writing memory I was trying to recall.
I learned from writing this narrative that I could write much faster than I thought. In high school, it would’ve taken me ages to write 500-700 words. I was able to easily write the same amount in a lot less time. Additionally, I had a lot of difficulty putting my thoughts into words, which hurt me in writing essays in high school. However, after doing the free-writing exercises and writing the narrative, I was able to clearly write down whatever was on my mind, it was like my fingers were on cruise control just typing away on their own. I realized in the process of writing this essay that proper brainstorming allows for a strong foundation and draft.
“I wrote what I thought was good to myself, instead of what was good to a high school teacher.” This is the last sentence of my essay and I think someone that is reading my essay would think this is the most interesting sentence because it can be related to anybody that went to high school and had to write in the “five-paragraph format”.
I found this assignment a little challenging because it required me to think back to my childhood. Which was difficult since so many other things have happened since then and also because I had to talk about my relationship with reading and writing. Through writing this narrative I was able to really understand and reflect on my relationship with reading and writing. My narrative is about my struggles with reading from elementary, middle, and high school and how they shape my reading and writing.
The free writing assignment was really helpful because it allowed me to have an understanding of what memories I wanted to focus my narrative on. When it came to writing the narrative I had distinct images in my head of what each memory felt like and I tried to convey that through the pictures that I drew. Through out this whole process of writing my narrative I learned that I like this type of writing because I get to explain myself as opposed to the thoughts and writings of someone else. The most interesting part of my essay is the title “How I learned to Love Reading” because it hints at a struggle that is going to be explored in the writing.
Literacy Narrative 1: How I Learned to Love Reading
https://riaaaaaaaax.wordpress.com/literary-narrative-pt-1/
The X-pages warm up helped me to get into the writing mode, especially when I can just type with no concern of structure. It also made me realize that in high school I was never assigned to write narratives or write stories. It was always reading stories and analyzing. I enjoyed writing this way because it has been a while since I have before, but I look forward for other assignments like this.
I’ve always had trouble to organize my thoughts especially about what I want to write. There have been times where I would have written the major of my essay, and mentally, I would say, “I could’ve started the essay like this.” However, I would not have enough time to change my essay that drastically. My teachers have said that I start strong but stray off when I think of new ideas and perspectives. With this narrative, I was unsure what events I wanted to include. On my Google Doc, I would have multiple paragraphs of just a stream of conscious and not tie to any other paragraph. In the back of my mind, I was thinking about how I will put the paragraphs together in a cohesive way. I made sure to start relatively early because I expected myself to go back on what I wrote. The events that I choose were the most relevant to me because then I had a change in my perspective of writing. The reassurance that I can improve in writing, and it can be fun to write. I really just need to challenge myself more and be willingly to take helpful criticism. This narrative was a tad challenging because I wanted to make it light-hearted like adding small jokes but also not stray away from being serious.
I personally liked the line where I talk about writing about Minecraft in my main college essay. In though, I did not start to play Minecraft till recently. I can’t stop thinking about how I can relate starting from nothing to being successful enough to beat the Ender Dragon.
