Rose King Mr B English 1101 October 1, 2012

Defense Essay In my genre narrative I decided to create a scrapbook filled with deferent genres, picture, and examples of my work. Through the smaller genres, including simple sentences, a picture book, poems, and a five-paragraph essay, I created a well-rounded view of my entire literacy history. I used each genre in order of when I leaned them or when the effected me greatest. I did this to create a time-line of my literacy history. As you flip through my scrapbook you will start off reading simple sentences, but as you make you move forward you will see my writing begin to improve and become more intricate. I will also use examples and pictures as I take you down my literacy timeline. I believe that using a collection of different genres, instead of just one, better represents my literacy history. I didnt learn about literacy through just one genre, therefore I felt it would be an incomplete account on my literacy history if I had only used one. Each one of the genres I used has impacted the way I view and engage with literacy in a significant way. I used a scrapbook to hold all of my genres because it is very symbiotic to the organized mess that I have going on in my head. I have so many jumbled up thought floating around my mind at all times, just like a scrapbook is book of different scraps thrown all over the pages. The scrapbook aloud me to put my thoughts into a book in

absolutely no specific order, they could be all jumbled or very organized. The scrapbook also was a good way to present my different ganres. On the first page I wrote four fairly sentences, which introduced the ideas and purpose of the scrapbook. I wrote this introductory on the type of lined paper that children use to learn how to write. I call this genre simple sentences. Although it isnt an obvious genre, like poetry, it is still indeed a genre. Children learn how to first write by starting off with writing simple sentences. I made this genre the introduction and put it at the very first page of my scrapbook because writing simple sentences was the very first thing I learned how to do. I even wrote on the lined practice paper to stress the fact that simple sentences are what we learned during the beginning of out literacy history. I included many personal examples of my work on those lined practice papers. I will later go into further detail about these examples later in my defense essay. Writing simple sentences could easily limit the information and ideas that one was trying to convey because there isnt room to put a lot of details. I, however, feel that picking this genre was the perfect way to keep the introduction of my scrapbook short and to the point. Im also pleased that it is on the first page because it shows that simple sentences were the first stepping-stone in learning to write and read. The next genre I created was a picture book to describe how my culture has impacted the way I view literacy today. I feel that this is a logical way to describe my literacy history because it shows, from start to finish, a complete picture of my upbringing in Waxhaw. In my picture book I showed the strong influence Waxhaw has had on my views of literacy. After reading the book it becomes very clear that I consider Waxhaw to be one of my literacy sponsors.

A picture book is typically a short story that includes illustrations/pictures. I chose a picture book because it has specific meaning to my literacy history, which is why I put it in my scrapbook first.. Im a very visual person. I first learned how to read by looking at picture books. Even to this day when I read I picture what Im reading with images in my head. To me, a good piece of literature is something that will create an image in my brain to help me comprehend the piece of text. This applies to writing as well. When I write I turn the words on the page into images in my mind. If the literature doesnt create an image than it is typically not descriptive enough. Im able to comprehend words better when I use pictures to tell the story. A picture book was the best way to talk about my culture because I was literally able to show where Im from, rather than just talking about it. I wanted to display my culture using visuals so the pictures would create a clear story in my audiences minds. The third genre in my scrapbook is poetry, which I used to talk about how my home life and literacy sponsors shaped my views on literacy. I wrote three poems. The first poem, called Home, discusses how living at my home with my family has impacted the way I view literacy. My next poem is called Mother and it talks about my mom as literacy sponsor. Finally, my last poem is called Beverly and it talks about my aunt being a literacy sponsor. I picked poetry for two reasons. First of all, poetry was the next major genre I learned, which impacted how I engage with literacy. Secondly, I wanted to present my home, mom, and aunt in a way that wasnt boring because none of them are boring. Poetry taught me to stop looking at every literacy situation I encountered as a black and white situation. I taught me to think out of the box in new, abstract ways. This is exactly the reason I chose to use poetry to talk about my home and literacy sponsors.

Although poetry is a strong genre to use, I feel it leaves a little bit more up to the imagination because I cant write out word for word what I want to say. This gives the audience room to interpret the poem the way they want to. I will very briefly describe each of the poems I wrote. Home contains an ABCA rhyme scheme. I chose this because I felt it gave of the vibe I wanted to give off about my home. In this poem I talked about how my mom, dad, and sister each treated literacy differently. This results in my values on literacy containing bits and pieces of all of their values. In my poem Mother, I talked about my mom as a literacy sponsor. I used four different haikus to discuss her opinion that literacy is extremely important and how that influenced me to value literacy highly. I used multiple haikus in order to convey my moms strong opinions. In my last poem, Beverly, I used an AABB rhythm scheme. I thought this would help change the tone of the poem from serious to fun and inspirational. I wanted to do this because, even though I talk about a serious subject, my aunt is that last from serious. In Beverly I talk about my aunts speech impediment, how she feels about, and how it has influenced the way I view and engage with literacy. Poetry was a very successful way to discuss how my home, my mother, and my aunt have all impacted the way I view literacy. The last genre I used was a five-paragraph essay to talk about my literacy history throughout school. I picked this genre because I felt it was very appropriate to write about school using the same genre most teachers required us to use all throughout school. It is also one of the last and most complex genres that I learned in school. A five-paragraph essay consists of an introduction paragraph, three body paragraphs, and one conclusion paragraph. As much as I used to hate writing five-paragraph essays, I can now realize

how much I learned from them. This genre taught me how to structure and organize a paper, which can save a lot of time in the long run. This is a helpful tool to possess when writing a paper on a specific topic. Of course throughout school I have had many experiences writing five-paragraph essays, but the one I remember most was from my tenth grade writing test. I had to tell what success meant to me. I remember struggling with time on the test and I just barely finishing it. If it werent for making an out line, I never would have finished. Learning how to outline for five-paragraph essays taught me that I should always have a plan ahead of time. After learning this I began to write outlines for all of my assignments. This ended up saving me a lot of time. I used to think all good papers had to be in the form of a five-paragraph essay. I no longer think that a paper has to contain five paragraphs to be considered good writing. I do, however, believe that in order for a paper to be considered good writing, it must be well organized. I didnt just use multiple genres in my scrapbook; I also included examples of my own literacy work from when I was young. This will show how my literacy work has grown and improved over time. These samples of my writing give a real life look into how Ive developed different literacy history throughout time. Ill warn you now; my spelling was pretty bad in most of the early pieces I wrote. Starting on page three, I added a few examples of simple sentences I wrote on that brown, lined practice paper. As you flip though them you can see my sentences get a bit more detailed. I drew pictures to go along with the simple sentences. This goes back to me being a visual person; it was much easier for me to write if I had an image of what I was writing about. Next, on page five, I included a few pages from my second grade composition book. You can tell my writing

had slightly improved from first grade. I was beginning to form stories instead of just sentences. On page six I included a picture book that I wrote at the end of my second grade year. It was called The Cat. Although my spelling hadnt improved, I was now able to write an entire short story. On the eighth page I attached two different writing samples from third grade. These show some improvement in my spelling and writing. Finally, on the twelfth page, I have included different examples of poetry that I wrote in forth and fifth grade. These poems show much better spelling, vocabulary, and writing skills. I included all of these writing samples into my scrapbook so you could see my development throughout my literacy history. My scrapbook also contains pictures. These pictures add to the genres and create little narratives. On the ninth page there are pictures of two books. The first is Junie B. Jones. My mother used to read Junie B. Jones books to my sister before we went to bed. I remember there was one night when we convinced her to read the entire book in one night. We thought it was the coolest thing. The next book is called Hank the Cowdog. Around the time I was in fourth grade Hank the Cowdog was one of my all time favorite books. I had the all the books and I even had a t-shirt. Both of these were books that I read during my childhood that had a positive influence on my attitude towards reading today. Page fourteen is filled with pictures that go along with the little narratives inside my five-paragraph essay. I didnt include pictures from elementary school because I already included those at the beginning of the scrapbook. The first picture is a group shot of my eighth grade English class that was taken right before out eighth grade graduation ceremony. Below that picture in the middle of the page was my Marvin Ridge High Schools logo. In the top right corner theres a picture of me doing homework after class.

I was very studious. The blond woman on the left middle of the page is Ms. Every. Ms. Every is one of my favorite teacher ever and a very influential literacy sponsor. I hadnt always been fond of Ms. Every though. When I had her for English III I did very little work in her class. In the photograph below Ms. Every there is a picture of what we used to do in class. We would draw on and play games on the white bored. The day that picture was taken we had drawn a class portrait. As you can see we didnt get much done in that class. In the bottom right hand corner is a picture of Ms. Larr, another one of my literacy sponsors. Ms. Larr was a negative influence, because of many reasons, but most importantly it is because she was vary unhelpful. The picture right next to Ms. Larr represents me when I was trying to figure out how to write a research paper. Luckily for me Ms. Every was willing to help me out. The last picture is on page 15. This is a picture of me at graduation. Graduation high school was a big achievement, as well as huge part of my literacy history. After graduating high school I started college. This meant I moved I moved away from home and family to a new school and a new culture. Everything is changing, and as it changes it will affect my literacy history. I used the picture of me walking away at graduation to symbolize the end of that part of my literacy history.