Project 5: Literacy Narrative and Reflection with Focus on Your Academic Discipline (10%)

Draft Due: Thursday, Dec. 3 Final Paper Due: Friday, Dec. 4 Length: 4-5 pages. Sources: Not required.

Purpose and Audience You are to write a narrative describing a childhood memory. The narrative should illustrate how you gained understanding of or interest in one of the three academic disciplines. Your purpose is to relate a formative experience to your current interests and ambitions for scholarship at the university. You may also include a reflective section on your experience and progress thus far as a scholar in your chosen discipline. The reflective section may be separate or incorporated into your narrative.

Your audience is an educated group of peers who share an interest in and basic knowledge of the academy, its disciplines, their respective foci and methods of inquiry. (This audience includes your teacher and your fellow classmates).

Focus and Expectations All of us are Scientists, Social Scientists, and Humanities scholars: we all test hypotheses about the world around us by interacting with it; we all formulate theories about other people’s (not to mention our own) motivations as individuals and as members of groups; and we all interact with texts—whether we are working to create them or interpret them for meaning.

Successful papers will go beyond simple remembering and telling. Your final draft should connect what we’ve discussed in class about the disciplines and their methods of knowledge-making and your own experiences, values, passions, and interests. You should also strive to stretch your creative muscles—make your narrative your own with voice, style, tone, imagery, and the like.

Process Pages 21-37 of The Norton Field Guide to Writing provide several strategies by which to approach a literacy narrative. We will also discuss the narrative mode in class.

Assignment developed by Kate Maddalena.