Assignment Two
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Literacy Autobiography
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Weeks 1 and 2
The Assignment
This assignment asks you to consider one or more moments in your life when you engaged a text in a significant way. The term “text” is used very broadly here to indicate any sort of communication that requires interpretation. A text can be written or typed words, it can be spoken language, it can be a print advertisement, a painting or other visual work, it can be a movie, a webpage or music/lyrics. It can also be clothing, a gesture, a dance, etc.
Defined in this broad way, texts are all around you. As you move through daily life, you are perpetually generating and refining texts of your own and you are always engaging and responding to texts produced by others.
This assignment:
 provides opportunity for you to think about the moments in your life that have most affected you as a reader and producer of texts;
 draws attention to your particular textual literacies;
 asks you to reflect upon your various literacies in a meaningful way so that you develop a better sense of how and why you engage texts;
 helps you examine the implications, both positive and negative, of your textual engagements;
 provide insight into the role textual literacy plays in your life.
How to do this assignment:
Consider your experiences as widely as possible, selecting those that seem significant, those that help you construct your account most effectively.
As you reflect on your past, do not limit yourself only to certain kinds of experiences. Literacy
(and learning of all kinds) is fundamentally social, and individuals acquire literacy as the result of a wide range of interactions. We become "literate" through a wide range of experiences, not necessarily only through schooling, so you will want to examine your past carefully and thoughtfully, discovering as much as you can about your "educational experiences" (broadly defined) and considering carefully how those experiences contributed to (or not) your becoming literate.
Your thinking and writing will culminate in a short paper (about 1 ½ pages) that captures one or more of your most significant engagements with texts.
The structure of the paper is simple: you will describe your memories of textual engagement and follow your recollection with a critical reflection that comments on the meaning of your selected memory/ies.
Your essay will be evaluated on how well you:

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 mine your experiences for ideas and insights concerning your development of literacy/ies; describe your experiences, fleshing out your story with relevant supporting details; reflect on those experiences, showing depth of thought and critical analysis; provide relevant examples so that your essay “shows” and does not just “tell”; command language by writing coherent sentences that display a control of diction; use grammar, mechanics and punctuation as part of communicating effectively.