Category: Uncategorized

From the beginning of the semester, there was an obvious need for peer review in this class.  With all the large works of writings that we were going to create and work with, it would make sense to swap around work in order for our classmates to give a new interesting and different perspective.  The peers that I have had in this class were Jenna and Jon.  I was able to see how my peer reviews had a positive effect on my peer’s writing, and showed overall the worth of the peer review.  The paper that I best analyzed and edited was Jon’s second paper.  His second paper was definitely rough to begin with, so it was very easy to make both detailed and specific examples of things Jon can improve upon.

My significant writing project was paper 2.  Paper two was the paper that I felt I spent the most time on, and thus is in my opinion the best paper that I wrote for this class.  I made sure that there were no errors, and that it was both well edited and well quoted, so that the reader would know exactly what is going on.    Paper 2 was about the different works of scientific articles we read to try and immerse ourselves in the discourse of science.  That paper both showed that my writing was improving before my eyes, but also that there was room for improvement.

 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MGsez3t9c_OBUpA4j073UuLvAsHZLhWvjKSHW44X6yk/edit

 

Just a random blog post

In conclusion, victim narratives are some of the most interesting and complex of all the narratives that we’ve read in class.  The identity changes that come with a victim narrative are much more interesting than just reading along to a hero narrative.  In addition, sometimes victim narratives are the ones with the best endings.  Rising Cairn is a great source of literacy narratives and the nest ones that I found were victim narratives.

Original

Victim narratives can be very complex, and can be filled to the brim with identity shifts and changes in opinion.  One victim narrative that was filled with a lot of different theme and identity shifts was called “Something from Nothing” by Drew Wunderli.  Drew’s work was very interesting because it provided a very unique perspective. He always had to aspire to do as well as his twin brother, which seemed to be a tremendous pressure on him.  Drew says of his brother, “He was phenomenal at writing. But he couldn’t teach me how to write like him because I would become too frustrated.(2)” Drew clearly has high aspirations, but he finds his brother’s unique talent discouraging to his own writing.  He feels like because his writing is inferior to his brother, he is also inferior, which drives him to fall behind in his english classes. This type of falling off in a class is fairly common, but the pressure that comes from an overachieving twin brother is something that is much more rare and unfortunate.  

Revised

Narratives with a victim focus are usually very complex.  In many cases, they contain a plethora of identity shifts that make a good retelling of a story great.  There was one narrative from the “Rising Cairn” database that really encompassed what a good vicitm narrative is.  This narrative was named “Something from Nothing” by Drew Wunderli.  Drew provided a very unique perspective in his narrative.  He had to compete with his brother, which was just another added pressure to an already stressful school experience.  His brother was clearly the better writer, but when he tried to help him out, there was a clear disconnect.  He says of his brother “He was phenomenal at writing. But he couldn’t teach me how to write like him because I would become too frustrated.(2)”  While his heart is in the right place, he shouldn’t try to compare himself to his brother at all.   He feels like because his writing is inferior to his brother, he is also inferior, which drives him to fall behind in his english classes. This type of falling off in a class is fairly common, but the pressure that comes from an overachieving twin brother is something that is much more rare and unfortunate.

In my work of literature, I have a lot of areas in which I can improve.  I need to be able to relate quotes from the scholarly works on sponsorship that we read.  Alexander, Brandt, and Williams all have very well written articles that I have to use as a reference, or else my paper will not be as strong.  The first thing that I need to do is reread and make sure there are no errors.  If I give it another proofread, it will sound and flow so much better.   I also need to try and make better quotation sandwiches.  Usually, I try to put a ton of effort into my quotations so that my paper has better evidence.

My introduction paragraph is one of the best paragraphs that I wrote.  Despite that, there are definitely a few things that I could work on.  For starters, there are a few people that I should introduce better.  I should try and introduce Williams, Brandt, and Alexander in more detailed.

Chris McDevitt

11/2/18

English 110J

Paper 3 Barclays Paragraphs

In literacy narratives, the most commonly used type of narrative is the success narrative. A success narrative is a narrative in which the author has to go through something tough, but when they do, it is a great success.  Alexander says that in the grand scheme of student literacy narratives, success narratives are the most widely written. She then exclaims, “The most common “cultural narrative” that scholars observe students performing in literacy narratives is the conventional literacy success story, a narrative that assumes the more literate one is, the more successful he and she will be.(609)”  This shows that most students enjoy writing about a literacy moment of joy rather than of disappointment or sadness. A good example of a success narrative is the literacy narrative written by Chelsey Haughey. Chelsey wrote a narrative about how a program called Title One at her school changed her life. She explains that she was falling behind in her first grade class because she didn’t know how to spell words, and thus she needed to be put into the Title One class to get the help she needed.  She said of Title One that, “That class really did change my life. I owe my achievements to my Title One teachers Mrs.Kanakis, Ms.Story, and my parents who never gave up on me despite how frustrating it got at times.”  She strongly suggests that it would have been beneficial for many struggling young writers to get into a program like that at a young age. She says that it changed her life, which means that it is incredibly important to her.

 

Literacy narratives appear to have a good many patterns running through them at all times.  Whether it is schematic, thematic, or structural, it seems that reading literacy narratives from different people can sometimes sound very very similar.  First off, the crowdsourcing spreadsheet shows off many different patterns. The two most prevalent patterns is that the vast majority of victim narratives have to do with school, and most of them happen during middle or high school.  I have noticed this by observing which other narratives people describe as victim and then looking at when and where these victim narratives took place. In the victim narrative by Meghan Mazzochi, she is a high school student and her story is a victim narrative.  She says in her paper, “He gave me so much advice on how to “fix it” that the essay started to sound more like him then it did me. It was the first time that I felt like I couldn’t speak up in my writing.” Now this quote is extremely relevant because it is common of a lot of the victim narratives that we’ve read to have a story similar to Meghan’s.  Many high school students go through a period where they fall out of love with writing because of the restraints that high school teachers put on the content that students write. Another literacy narrative that falls into the exact same category as Meghan’s is by a man who just goes by Troy. Troy’s literacy narrative talked about how he’d struggled a little as a freshman, but that things were about to get a lot worse during his sophomore year.   When he talks of sophomore year, he brings up that “ The highest grade I received on an essay for him was a low “B”. I consistently struggled in that class no matter how hard I tried.” This is him saying how much of a struggle it was to keep up with the course during his 10th grade year.  

When reading student made literacy narratives, I find the victim ones most interesting to read.  A few of the narratives that I have skimmed over and have the victim narrative are…

https://medium.com/rising-cairn/expect-the-unexpected-1e8806cadf64

https://medium.com/rising-cairn/live-or-die-ca628f105087

https://medium.com/rising-cairn/how-title-one-changed-my-life-393bd9aa2de9

https://medium.com/rising-cairn/finding-the-support-for-succeeding-53a7ddbdd378

https://medium.com/rising-cairn/blank-screen-9e8608a48ce3

https://medium.com/rising-cairn/finding-the-support-for-succeeding-53a7ddbdd378