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.
collreadwrit2e
