How to Write a Good Literacy Narrative

A literacy narrative is often used by writers to tell what they feel about writing, reading, and speaking. Many famous writers have written literacy narratives to help their readers get to know them. Quite often, literacy narratives are also used as the first assignment for composition courses in college. Such assignments serve several purposes. They allow students to introduce themselves to their classmates and teachers, to demonstrate their understanding of the role of writing and reading in their lives, and to reflect on their relationships with these important activities. We recommend that you approach such assignments as a personal story and check out these tips from Writers-House service.

Being Literate

The most common definition of literacy is being able to write and read. Most instructors ask their students to stick with this definition. However, a more general definition describes literacy as competence and knowledge. Your literacy narrative may consider the topic in one of these contexts.

The more general definition of literacy can include language literacy, professional literacy, etc. This term refers to your understanding of a certain subject in the context of the language. For example, if you play football, you should know such terms as “punt,” “down,” “offense,” etc. What makes literacy narratives somewhat challenging to write is that you should stay focused on your topic. For example, when writing about football, your topic is “football literacy,” not “football.” However, keep in mind that your instructor may also ask you to write a paper about reading and writing, with no relation to any other topic.

A Narrative

Another important aspect of a literacy narrative is narration. Your paper must tell a story. Thus, it should have a theme and a plot. It must be meaningful and worth sharing it with others.

Don’t make your paper filled with explanations of different words and don’t turn it into a list of books you read and essays you wrote. Your essay should illustrate your personal journey, explaining what writing and reading mean to you.

As we’ve already mentioned above, you may not be able to consider the term “literacy” in the broad context. Your professor may ask you to simply write about reading and writing. However, writing about your personal journey allows you to create an interesting narrative, telling a story of your life from the moment you’ve learned to read to the moment you’ve written this paper.

Did I Do a Good Job?

To evaluate your literacy narrative, ask yourself the following questions. Your literacy narrative is probably good if you have all of these elements:

1. Does your narrative have a theme?
2. Does it tell a story?
3. Does it have an open-form structure?
4. Is it coherent?
5. Is it cohesive?
6. Does it provide specific details and examples?
7. Is it clear?
8. Does it have a title?
9. Is it appropriate for your audience?
10. Does it have clear opening and closing sections?

How to Write a Literacy Narrative

A literacy narrative is an open-form prose. Thus, it doesn’t have a strict structure and it isn’t based on a strong thesis statement. Here are some tips that will help you write a good literacy narrative:

1. Brainstorm on a topic and choose the topics that are meaningful to you. What do you want to write about? Do you prefer poetry or prose? What’s your favorite book?
2. Select a few topics that you would like to cover in your narrative. Write them in a sentence form because your essay will not be about your favorite book but about “how I realized that To Kill a Mockingbird is my favorite book.” If the topics that you’ve selected in step 1 don’t involve much reading or writing, we recommend that you choose other topics.
3. At this point, you likely understand your theme. Write it down and develop it. If you cannot do it, just skip this step.
4. Write your first draft. Focus on your theme. If you don’t have a theme yet, use writing to understand what your theme should be.
5. Read your draft and think of its strengths and weaknesses. Think about the questions your teacher may ask. Write them down and try to answer them.
6. Have a peer review if you can.
7. Try to get any feedback and revise your literacy narrative based on it.
8. If you have any problems, contact Writers-House.com and order professional writing assistance.
9. Finalize your paper and submit it!