Spend five minutes freewriting on each of the following prompts (for a total of 20 minutes of writing). Remember this is “writing to think,” and I’m looking to see that you really explore each prompt and generate some ideas. Think of this like an exercise that’s building your writing muscle. And I hope you’ll enjoy discovering some insights into the texts, the topic of literacy, and your own experience.
- For homework, you’ve read three literacy narratives–stories that tell about how a person developed their literacy (knowledge and use of a language). Apply Brandt’s idea of “sponsors” to these narratives and think about who or what provided the authors opportunities to develop their literacy. Make a list of 3-5 sponsors for each author. Then decide which sponsor is most surprising or interesting to you and write about it for five minutes. Explain what the sponsor was and how it operated as a sponsor in the life of the author. Explore and explain why this sponsor is surprising or interesting. (You don’t need to do one for each author–just one in total).
- Identify something in the experience of one or more of the literacy narrative authors that you can relate to. Explain what you relate to and why.
- What is similar and what is different in the experiences that the authors had with literacy and literacy sponsors?
- On pages 178-183 of “Sponsors of Literacy,” Brandt shows how people can “appropriate” literacy, meaning that they use literacy in a different way from how the sponsor of literacy intended. One example from Brandt is how Carol White’s job acted as a literacy sponsor, teaching her how to write for her job, but White used her new writing skills for religious activities. Do you think the authors you read appropriated literacy from a sponsor (used the literacy they developed in a way not inteded by the sponsor)? Explain how they did or did not “appropriate” their literacy. You can write about one, or two, or all three of the authors you read, but be specific and write for about five minutes.
