Below, you will find the Literacy Narrative Essay Assignment file and the Assessment Rubric with Sample Feedback file. We have been building toward the drafting portion of this assignment by applying
ENG 108
Narrative Essay
Fall 2020
Narrative in Brief: As we have read in our class materials, the narrative form can be used for a variety of purposes, but the primary characteristic relies on the art of storytelling from a personal point of view. The author is speaking to the reader in order to convey an intimate picture of a past event with a specific purpose in mind.
Academic essays and longer research papers contain what is known as a thesis. This thesis carries the main point that you intend to define, describe, explain and support through your writing. In the case of the narrative, while there is not necessarily a clearly stated thesis , it is the purpose that serves as the thesis for the story. The purpose carries the main point that you intend for the reader to identify. The story and its analysis should bear out this purpose.
Assignment: Choose an event/experience from your life that you can use to craft a 1000 word (3 page) narrative essay. You may be able to tailor the narrative report you wrote for your journal assignment by identifying the purpose of a lesson learned from the experience and adding analysis to create a complete narrative essay. The purpose of the narrative essay should reveal a universal theme that will transcend the experience itself, and create a purpose in a broader context for the audience. Ask yourself, “why should this story matter to the reader?” Often the actual event is not the lesson learned in a broader context. For example, the event might be learning to play basketball, but the broader literacy may have been a life lesson in “what it means to be a teammate” or “what it means to work hard” or “how to respond to failure”. Such analysis will reveal a universal theme that will transcend the experience itself and create a purpose in a broader context for the audience.
Examples of Literacy Events:
how to play a particular sport
how to be a friend
how to be understanding
how to be funny
learning to read for the first time
learning a foreign language
how to be a parent
how to be a teacher
how to be a nurse
what it means to “learn” ____________________
a lesson learned (see below)
Examples of Lessons Learned:
“passion and inspiration are driving forces of motivation to achieve”
“inspiration can arrive out of the blue”
“listening from a place of inexperience can drive us forward with a thirst to know more”
“language can shape our identity”
“language is our identity”
“environment shapes our language”
“the futility to try changing that which cannot be altered”
“the realization of what ‘loneliness’ is”
“the realization that it is possible to overcome obstacles thought to be insurmountable”
Connecting to your Reader/Audience: Any of the listed literacies could be learned through personal experience. In fact, there are infinite experiences which could be described in narrative to drive home any of these or other themes. Yet even if the reader has never experienced a situation that illustrates the writer’s particular event, they should be able to identify with how the author was transformed by the experience. Similarly, after learning of the connection between the writer’s personal experience and a related purpose, the reader might recall an event in his or her own life that illustrates the same purpose. It is through the author’s purpose that the audience connects directly with the writer’s experience and, “communication” has been achieved. Your narrative should strive to build this kind of personal connection between the writer and reader.
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Preparing to Write: Generating Ideas & Text
A Journal Assignment has been provided to help you generate ideas. You may also use any combination of additional brainstorming to help you choose a narrative event. Examples include freewriting, listing, looping, clustering, webbing, or talking it out. As previously assigned, Norton provide a list and explanation of some of these brainstorming tools (pp. 391-39).
Additional Prompts
See the reading material “Prompts for the Narrative Essay” for additional ideas of events that could become the topic of a narrative essay.
