Jacob Unell Mr.

Borrero English 1101-025 17, February, 2012 Defense Essay How do you write a technical manual out of poems? Step by step of course. The project called for a genre that illustrated my literacy experience and development. In order to achieve the optimum level of coverage I had to combine two known genres into a Frankenstein like product. The purpose of this essay is to explain the technical manual that I have created, and to give insight on how diverse my history of becoming literate was. In order to do this I must discuss the structure and content of the technical manual along with how the structure and content tell my literacy story. I wrote a 22 page technical manual of my literacy experience, but each step is an individual poem. In order to keep the project as a technical manual, each poem has four stanzas, with 4 lines each and each line within the stanza must rhyme. The purpose of this format is to mimic the uniform look of a technical piece. The two very conflicting genres were used for a purpose. The purpose is to illustrate two conflicting sides of my life. On one hand I have a dominating side that contains rules, restrictions, codes, and so on, but on the other hand I have recessive side that doesnt like rules, and wants to find its own way. The actual steps being poems themselves show that the real content of my literacy experience is free and self-driven. While I have had to structure the outside appearance as a rule based format to accommodate the majority of my influences. Also the technical genre always me to leave notes to better explain structure changes in the text. The structural changes can be justified by the ground that poems can do anything they want structurally. Together as a technical manual made of poems, they show how the two genres can coincide although they are completely different.

For my first poem, I described how I learned to initially read. It tells of how they tried to teach me with sounding things out, and the frustration behind that. Then they realized that I was a visual memorizer, and through much effort I began my reading ability. The second poem tells of my condition that I had when I was little, dyslexia. This was highly problematic in the sense that since I read with site words, if the letters flipped, I could not read at all. After much work I overcame dyslexia and Once I learned to flap my wings I flew. The third poem refers to a book that I read in 5th grade, Sleepy Hallows. The poem tells of how I had a negative experience with novels, which has led to how I see large books now. The phrase THE STAND refers to a court room like scene, and the verdict is guilty. Then we switch to middle and high school. The fourth poem is about my 8th grade EOG. It refers to how I feel about the system of reading in EOGs as a whole. The poem shows that I disapprove of the questions and readings. The feeling is so strong that at the end of the poem I completely change the ending rhyme scheme to rebel against it. The fifth poem shows how my 12th grade class affected my work ethic in reading. The class made me actually sit down and work hard on reading, instead of just glancing through the material. In the end of the class I was appreciate for the class, but still not thrilled about the work. In the sixth poem we switch into the section about my writing in school. I first told about my 1st grade experience. They tried to teach me how to spell, and the main way they did that was to have us sound out the words. Since I was a visual memorizer, this method did not work for me. For this reason, for several years (which spill into the seventh poem) the teachers doubted my ability to improve my spelling. This problem led to my lack of writing skill due to the massive amount of weightiness towards spelling. At the end of poem 7 there is a complete stanza missing. This lack of a stanza shows how the teachers believed that I lacked in writing ability. My 8th poem is about the 7th and 10th grade writing test. It describes how I tried my hardest to do my best, and the end result is that I got the lowest possible

passing grade on both. Then I tell of my opinion of the writing test itself. I say that I believe that we need a new grading system, because the graders cant give a specific grade to a piece of work that varies from person to person. My 9th step tells of my 11th grade year in reference of writing. In my eyes the teacher was evil. I even referred to her as having cleft feet, meaning she is the devil. She gave stupid homework, which explains why my sweat was useless, because the homework was useless. On the other hand my 12th grade year, poem 10, shows how that teacher gave a lot of homework but it wasnt useless. As I saw it, I needed to learn how to do the work since I was planning on going to college. While I did not like the work by any means to the point that it will be the last thing I forget, I did the homework with the mindset that it will help me in the long run. At first through I was still in a rebel like mode from the 11th grade, but I slowly changed my thinking to how it should be. Now I can put in my two cents, meaning that now I convey my information effectively. Moving onto the home portion of the manual we look at the first book I ever read, the foot book. I could not read it at all by myself, because if I did not know a word I would be stuck. I could not sound out words like what my parents were trying to show me. After a while of hearing the words over and over I memorized the words and I could read them but not any other random words I saw. This told my parents that I read through site words and memorization. This provided the alternative route I used to learn when the teachers could not teach me their way. Then I tell the step about how we as a family talked to each other. This contained how we mainly used straight talk to get the point a crossed without fluffing it up. The first three stanzas are told from my parents stand point, so they can tell the audience why they raised me the way they did. The benefit from this point of view is that I would be a small child at the time and I couldnt understand the reason at the time, so the point of view is best told from a parent who understands. The last stanza is in my voice, showing that I have matured to adulthood and now can understand. The next section tells

of the freedom I had growing up. The first stanza tells of my living conditions growing up. The second tells of the rule itself, and the words school and cool are used twice to re-enforce the two sides of the rule. The third stanza tells of the effect of this rule, and the freedom that came with it. Many people thought that the situation was crazy, but I have the perfect personality to excel when I have free range. Growing up in a technology surrounded world probably shows the most where I learned how I see the world and developed my primary form of writing. I state that I was immersed in technology and science. This immersion shaped my logical side to a fine point, but at the same time I never had to apply it to paper for my home life, so I have limited practice in technical writing compared to the amount of technical thinking I do. This offset creates a big problem. If I think more then I write, then I am more likely to go off topic or something else wrong with the writing itself. This problem makes me nervous, and that only makes things worse. The last two lines change rhyme scheme to reinforce that I feel restricted by the technical writing practices and shows that I prefer the freedom of poetry. A major shift in my literacy happened that affected the field of communication. This shift is covered in the poem The switch from the son to the man of the house. In the first stanza my parents divorce and I become the head of the house. The second stanza illustrates how in this disaster to my family, I had to mature instantly in order to take my new role. Then I tell of how almost overnight I caught up to the skill set of my dad, and I was applauded heavily. To wrap up the home section and poem I stated that my mind changed in how I see the world, and that my literacy in technical applications increased multi-fold. I start off the work section of the manual with a car project I did at home. The purpose of this choice is because you dont home on a car, you work on a car. Also this project was the thing I was working on when I had to shift from a child with a toy to an adult working on a car. This was because it

was when my parents split. I start off by saying that I had to rebuild the total engine. In order to work on the engine and make it run again I had to do research, study the engine, and plan everything out before I did it. Through much work and frustration I finally got the car to work again. This was the event that unleashed all the technical nature that had been hiding since I was little. There was a steady change in the rhyme scheme at the end to show how I slowly changed over the course of this event to form what I am now. The following step is actually a step back in order to before the car. This is done to show the power of freedom in poetry again. In the first stanza the poem describes the title of the job. In the second stanza I tell of how I was left in harsh weather conditions to do my job alone. Next I tell of how I learned to do what I was told with a drive behind it, and go beyond expectations. The following lines relate to how the third stanza relates to literacy. When I am given instructions in the work place, I see them as a minimum standard, and I strive to achieve higher than minimum. Then we fall into the last step of the work section. The step is about subway and how all my prior experience with communication is affected from this job. In subway you are told how to do something, and that is the set way it is to be done. There is no alternative ways, or suggestions to be made. There also is a general lack of communication between workers. One person thinks the other is going to do something, while the other guy thinks that the first guy is going to do it. For this reason there is not a whole lot that gets done when anyone is there. In the third and fourth stanza you can derive that when I work, I am pretty much on my own. When I work, the other co-worker(s) at the time think that I will do everything, because I dont take breaks often and dont stop working. Ending the poem it goes on an extra line. The purpose is to show that subway expects more out of me than what I can give. There is a lack of material for the community section of the manual. This is a reflection of the insignificance of this section to my literacy history. In the first poem, it is extremely short in comparison

to the rest of the manual. This illustrates my previous point in that my community did not play a huge role in my development. The first stanza states how there is not really a neighborhood where I lived, and there were no kids my age. The ending just states that sense there was a lack in community, I developed through the other sections more than this one. The other step in the section is about my bad experience reading aloud in church. I was made fun of because I did not read very well and had to have help to read from the bible. I said I would forget it tomorrow, but if you look at the definition of tomorrow, you will notice that tomorrow never really comes. The poem tells that now I am scared to read out loud, and when I do I mess up just as much because of my fear. In the ending of the step, I state that I will never forget that torture I went through. In conclusion, I used the genre poem, and technical manual to illustrate and explain my literacy history. I was able to use the bits and pieces of each to describe a mixed history of very different types of events that were created through four aspects of life. Through this project I gained vital insight into my literacy history. I invite you to make Multi-Modal project to experience the level of insight that I have.