examples of literacy narratives

By Laura Michael Brown, November 17, 2014

Below are the examples we didn’t get to in class today. Please do take a few minutes to listen to them and reflect on the questions below. We’ll look at a few other examples later on, but these are a great start. These pieces are from the Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives out of Ohio State. Not every essay in the online archive is an audio essay, but feel free to poke around the archive and get some ideas for potential topics.

These two examples are very different approaches to a literacy narrative–they each have their strengths and weaknesses, but I want these examples to give you a sense of the range of what’s possible with this project. As you listen, think about these questions:

• What makes this a literacy narrative?
• What is the purpose/point of the story? How do you know? Do they state the point of the story outright? Or do they let the story speak for itself and let listeners infer the point? What are the effects of that choice?
• How do they begin their narratives? What kind of information do they start with? How do they get the listener’s attention?
• Where do they include detail? What scenes do they spend the most time describing? Why do you think they draw the most attention to those scenes?
• How do they conclude?
• How do they use sound effects/music? How do those effects help establish a mood or illustrate a detail?
• What do you think about their vocal delivery? How does their tone help (or hurt) their narrative?
• What could have made this narrative better? What would you do differently?

“The Lost Art of Note Passing”

http://daln.osu.edu/handle/2374.DALN/2872

“My Introduction to Love”

http://daln.osu.edu/handle/2374.DALN/887