Writing your own language narrative allows you to reflect on and share important events in your past that helped shape your speaking, reading and/or writing practices. Writing a language narrative is an uncommon assignment—we rarely reflect on our own communication skills and strategies. We are, however, constantly getting feedback from all of contexts about the language we’re using. In short, language narratives require you to write a short story about your experiences with speaking, reading or writing and reflect on how those experiences contributed to your literacy education.

Tips for writing a language narrative:

Pick a Story: All language narratives start with a specific story of literacy learning or development. These can range from reading with a parent before bedtime, to struggling to make sense of a text written in a foreign language, being dismissed because of your accent, or getting negative feedback on writing you’ve done. These stories don’t need to be about your earliest memories of speaking, reading and writing, just memories that are personally significant and meaningful.

Use Vivid Details: Your specific story of language use, learning or development should pull the reader in, making us truly understand your experiences. Cite and describe specific reading or writing materials you used, whether it was a dog-eared copy of your favorite book or a shiny new laptop. Describe specifically the interaction with a person in a narrative about speaking. Include details about their facial expression, tone, or even how they looked. The more vivid the details you try to remember and relay, the easier it will be to reflect on these experiences and the more inclined your reader will
be to follow your narrative.

Identify Key Contributors: Your language experience didn’t happen in isolation; somebody contributed to your story of speaking, reading or writing. Describe the important people in the story and tell why they’re important, whether it was a mean schoolteacher, a loving parent, a helpful friend, or even a TV program or movie.

Reflect on Significance: No language narrative is complete without an answer to the “so what” question. Document your thoughts feelings about how the story played out. Maybe it was a positive experience that inspired you to action. For example, you might assert that because your mother taught you how to read, you want to teach others how to read. Or you might say that since you and your friends developed your own written code to secretly communicate, you have been deeply passionate about computer
coding and programming. But….don’t shy away from a negative experience if that’s what you want to talk about. We’ve all experienced negative feedback on language use. Keep it real. Tell the story you want to tell….and tell us what you think about that story. How did it affect you going forward.

Use the language you want to use! This is not an academic essay; it’s personal. Use the language that feels natural to you. Be proudly multilingual by mixing it up—slang, pidgins, first languages, vernacular, idiom, whatevs….all language is welcome. Keep in mind that the essay needs to be understood by an English speaking audience….but that doesn’t mean that every word needs to be in English. Readers can derive meaning from context as well as from diction choices.

Requirements:

• Format the written narrative any way you want. You can include pictures, design your font, color, sound clips etc. Anything that makes sense in your composition.

• Please use the English language alphabet to phonetically write words, phrases or sections of language in which English language alphabet is not normally used (Arabic, Japanese, Hindi, Mandarin, Cantonese, Russian, Polish, Fukien, Tagalog, Pashto, Hanzi, Kanji, Hanja, Han Nom so many…too many to name…. etc.).

Length of the narrative should be 750-1250 words.