Jilian’s English 207 Blog Another amazing bgsu blog

What I found so interesting about this short excerpt was how surprising it was to me. My language seemed so personal to me; they are, after all, my words. I think of them and I say them. But were they always mine? No. Someone else taught me to speak. My vocabulary extends from my love of reading. Every time I encountered a “new” word, I looked it up in the dictionary. Just because it was new to me, however, did not mean that it was a new word. I did not, after all, invent the words. So reading from someone else that language first exists “in other people’s mouths” (5) was surprising for me.

In general, I think this means that literacy is a very socially dependent process. Perhaps this is why we place so much emphasis on it in school. Many of the educational psychologists, like Albert Bandura, have determined that a great deal of learning happens in the social context. We mimic our peers and we learn from each other. I believe the same will apply to literacy. In its base definition of being able to write, read, and subsequently communicate effectively what we know, this entire process will happen in a social context. We will learn basic communication from our parents, grandparents, siblings, and other family members. We will then form our own language based on the other people we meet, our peers, and others we happen to encounter.

For my own literacy, I’d never before considered how important the social aspect was. I’ve always loved reading and yet I was never sure how this developed. I’m sure it was because my mother placed an emphasis on it and always ensured that I had access to the library. My father, mother, brother, or sister were never as passionate about reading as I was. This is why I was so excited to meet my stepmother, who was just as much of a book geek as I am. She often took me to Border’s, my favorite place in the world, and we would spend hours there, perusing the shelves and picking up books. Many of my friends enjoyed reading, and so this literacy was shaped by the people in my life who supported it. This is just one example from many I could think of, but many of my blog posts are longer than I think my classmates’ are.

To close, I would like to share my favorite quote from the excerpt we read. “How we are saying what to whom affects what we can and will say.” This is so true in any context, especially a social one.

When writing any sort of document, keeping the reader in mind is of the utmost importance. Unless a writer plans on having no one read what he or she is writing (such as a journal), considering the audience is a must. Thus, I have given some thought to my ideal reader for each of the five topics I mentioned in my previous post.

My ideal reader for my music narrative: This person would have to be creative enough to acknowledge that songs can be subjective. Though the artist may have had something else in mind, I believe that music can touch people in ways that the artist may not have considered. Some people have difficulty accepting this, similar to how people have difficulty accepting that literary works can be interpreted differently from how the author intended it. They would, therefore, have to have an open mind and be able to acknowledge and believe in the profound, cathartic effect music can have on people.

My ideal reader for my football narrative: This reader would have to have more specific knowledge. I say this because most of the people who do not like football do not understand football. They don’t understand the rules and thus do not understand how it is the best sport in the world. Thus, my ideal reader for this particular narrative would have to have at least some semblance of an understanding of football. This is also because if a reader did not like or understand football, they would have trouble understanding the importance of football to me. The reader would have to understand that football can be more than just entertainment and that the sport itself is (generally) about more than just being good at it: it is about teamwork and building character.

My ideal reader for my baking narrative: This perfect reader would not have too many qualifications. He or she would just need to have some appreciation for baking because, again, there are some people who just don’t like to bake. I do believe, however, that most people like to eat things that are baked. In this sense, my perfect reader could be just about anyone.

My ideal reader for my interpersonal narrative: This reader would need to understand the dynamics of interpersonal relationships. He or she would need to know how to empathize and understand the patience that it requires. Other than this, I don’t think there are many more specifications for the ideal reader.

My ideal reader for my writing narrative: Simply put, this reader would need to have a love of writing. Unfortunately, many people (especially students) dislike writing and think it has no importance in the world. This is, I believe, because teachers approach writing from the wrong perspective. Consequently, I would need to have a reader that shared a love of reading and writing and could acknowledge the importance of the written word in a person’s life.

I have many literacies. As I believe I have stated before in this blog, I have more literacies than I probably realize. But for this narrative essay, I want to focus on something out of the ordinary, something more dynamic. This isn’t to say that other topics wouldn’t be interesting. I’m sure I could come up with a good narrative about my reading or writing literacies. But when I first heard about this project, assuming, of course, that I understand what’s required of me, I knew I wanted to focus on a different literacy topic. The following are five literacies that I would like to explore.

Music: Though I can’t play an instrument and according to my seventh grade choir teacher, I cannot sing, I still have a great passion for music. I know nearly everyone does but I think that the reasons behind peoples’ love for music can vary. In my own way, I am musically literate because I love listening to songs and deciphering the stories from them. I love the stories that songs can tell and I love picturing them in my head even more. This is probably why I enjoy (some) music videos so much. I also enjoy the powerful emotions that music can make people feel.

Football: I love football and know more about football than most people. On many occasions, I’ve corrected middle-aged men when they were discussing football in a restaurant. I get the strangest looks but I love doing so. Partially because I love explaining things to others (hence my degree in education) but mostly because I love talking about football and showing off what I know about it. I’d love to explore this literacy more in a narrative, especially since most of my football memories are tied in with my family or friends.

Baking: It seems simple enough but most people either don’t know how or don’t have the patience. I think baking well requires a certain sort of finesse and while I am in no way close to the people on the Food Network Challenges (love that show), I think I can hold my own pretty well in a kitchen. This would be an interesting literacy to explore more in a narrative as well.

Interpersonal: A lot of my friends come to me for advice or when they need to talk about something that’s troubling them. I think this is an important literacy to have, both as a person and as a future teacher. This could be a good topic to investigate more in a narrative.

Writing: Though I said I wanted to do something other than writing, I couldn’t think of a fifth topic. I have had some great experiences with writing, both academically related and not. I think writing is closely tied with knowing oneself and I think writing (letters, blogs, short stories, poems) has helped me in this process. It, too, could become an interesting topic for a narrative.

Writing has always been a passion and interest of mine. Yet, when I attempt to come up with an answer for “What is a narrative?” I’m at a loss for words. Again, I’ll revert to my own personal definition. For me, a narrative tells a story. That seems simple enough and yet this can get complicated. Now one must consider what elements are in a story, what a good story is, and what a good story does. A narrative has a definitive beginning, middle, and end. A narrative can inform, entertain, persuade, or even cause the reader to think. Either way, a narrative ought to teach the reader something. The narrative can teach something about a specific topic or a narrative could teach the reader something about him or herself. For me, a story needs certain elements. Thus, a narrative does not necessarily require specific characters but it does require a plot. It ought to include a variety of sophisticated writing tools, such as figurative language. Personally, I find writing to be a singular experience in which the writer can get in touch with him or herself. In this sense, a narrative should have a specific profound effect on the writer and subsequently the reader.

I have an immense amount of experiences with both writing and reading narratives, if my definition of a narrative is accurate. I read and write a great deal. I enjoy getting caught up in a good story and experiences the effects it can have on me. As such, I also enjoy writing a good story (or what I ultimately hope is a good story) and enjoying the cathartic effects of writing. I also enjoy critiquing and analyzing narratives, which I often find myself doing when both writing and reading them.

I came into this class period with a general idea of what I wanted to do for my visual literacy narrative. As stated in my previous blog post, I wanted to compile a book of my various literacies. I still plan on finishing my visual literacy narrative with this book in mind but talking with my group  helped solidify my plans and tweak them a bit as well. I bounced some of my ideas off of them and they helped me form my thoughts into a cohesive whole about my plan for my literacy narrative.

I plan on taking pictures of myself partaking in my various literacies, such as reading, texting, writing, etc. But I plan on working this into a general theme of what my literacies help me to do. By this, I mean my various literacies help me become a better thinker. Reading a book helps me think more about the connections and the relationships between the characters and overall plot. But being literate with texting can help me think more about the relationships between people and help me be more sympathetic with my friends and have more interpersonal knowledge. All of this will  help me be a better teacher, which I plan on being my overall theme that connects all of my literacies together into one being. Being literate in various mediums and with various things will help me better transmit this knowledge to my students and that is why being literate in a multitude of things is so important to me. I plan on conveying this pictorially in my literacy book.

The examples shown in class of visual narratives were all technologically based. This is to be expected, of course; doing things on computers is sometimes more efficient. But as I began to think about my personal literacies, I knew it would be unfair of me to do my visual narrative through some advanced technological medium. I am by no means computer illiterate, but I feel that PowerPoint is overdone in classrooms and I do not know how to make a movie. There’s nothing wrong with these choices, of course, but they aren’t representative of me or my personal literacies.

Thus, my rough plan for this project is as follows: I plan on making a book featuring my personal literacies. Books are an important part of my literacy and certainly help shape my thought process, which is another important part of my literacy that I plan on working into my project. So I was thinking of creating a book (not a fully bound professional book, of course) that features pictures of me partaking in my various literacies. I compiled a general outline of pictures that I want to include which are me reading various things, me writing in various mediums (both on paper and on a computer), me texting, me explaining something to someone else to demonstrate that I can think critically about what I have read/written, me discussing a book with someone else (that’s my personal favorite part of my literacy), and various other pictures. I plan on working this into a general theme of how my literacies help me think about my everyday life and help me plan for the future when I’ll need to be literate enough to teach things to others.

I think that a good visual narrative is one that is capable of telling a good without using too many words. An ideal narrative is one that would not require any words but I think this would be difficult to accomplish. One of the better visual narratives we looked at was, I believe, “The Journey of Eric Wooten’s Literary Experience.” He had little text and his pictures told an interesting and amusing story regardless. I could see where a clear beginning, middle, and end was.

A bad visual narrative is one that does not tell a clear story or one that would require even more words to express what is happening in the visual. I won’t give any actual examples because that seems slightly rude, but a less-than-exemplary visual narrative would be one wherein I could discern no clear beginning, middle, or end. If it were just a “visual,” then I wouldn’t need those elements. But this is a “visual narrative,” indicating at least some sort of story is being told and ought to be perceived as such by the audience looking at it.

This isn’t to say that all visual narratives ought to have all of the elements of a story. What I mean instead is that a visual narrative, especially the assignment in this class, could follow an actual sequence; could have a beginning, middle, and end; or it could follow the conventions of any other type of narrative. As long as it is not simply a muddle of various images that are rumored to have some sort of logical connection, I think that is a good visual narrative.

As the homework was to, I believe, ask a question about the readings assigned for Monday, I do have a more general question: what exactly is the difference between Creative Commons and a copyright? I hope this question was not answered on the site and I completely overlooked it, but I think I need more examples to fully compound my understanding. I’ve wondered a great deal about this.

In the other reading, the writers mentioned something along the lines of, “Remember that anything you put online is considered published.” What does this mean? Does this mean that the words on my blog are published and therefore protected by some sort of law? Doesn’t the fact that I could do nothing and probably would never know if people “stole” what I wrote online mean that any laws protecting what I wrote are essentially useless?

The main crux of the argument for using visuals is simply that visuals can often convey what words alone cannot. The most prevalent example I can think of is when I’m driving. If I come to a stoplight, it isn’t as though there are words trailing below the red light that says “Stop now.” The red light is a visual that conveys much more than just a simple red light. It tells us, if we’re approaching from afar, to slow down. It tells us to look in our rear view mirror to check that the people behind us are stopping also. It also makes me think of children’s books that are wordless. We used these in my Grammar & Writing class last semester and it astounded me just how much a picture could convey. Of course, there’s the cliche adage that “a picture is worth a thousand words,” but in this class and through the readings, I’ve discovered that this is so very true.

Visuals play an integral role in communication. When I read the articles for today and saw that even body language are included in visual literacy, I was astounded. It was then that I realized just how much we use visuals to communicate. I often “talk with my hands”–I’ll wave my hands to show my excitement, I’ll jab my hand to emphasize a point, I’ll cover my face if I don’t want to talk. Visuals can also play an important role in technological communications. One would be hard-pressed to find a website that didn’t contain visuals. I’d like to think this isn’t simply because people have such short attention spans that we need pictures to grasp our interest longer but rather because visuals can so enhance the story that a website is trying to tell.

Visuals play an integral role in my daily life. As I’ve said before, I enjoy writing and reading and telling stories. Even through a few days in this class, I’ve already learned how well visuals can help tell a story. This intrigues me and I look forward to investigating this more. Visuals play an important role in my education as well. There are certain concepts in my English classes or my Education classes that can best be conveyed with visuals. Even yesterday, in my General Methods course, we had to pictorially represent concepts for a field unit we were to plan for our future students and how it would help us become a more effective educator. This provides a nice segue into answering the question of how visuals will be important in my career. I plan on becoming an English teacher and I know that not everyone can learn best while reading. I also know that writing isn’t simply words on a page anymore. One can do a visual project that speaks more than they could ever have said with their words. As a teacher, I will use the overhead, I will use PowerPoints, I will use the chalkboard/dry erase board. I will also probably utilize a website that my students can access. All of these things require visuals to work and I know that I will be able to communicate best if I properly utilize all of the visuals at my disposal.

In attempting to pinpoint specific acts of literacy that I perform, I must first consider what the term literacy means to me. With regards to my previous post, literacy was not just reading and writing, but being able to think and being able to coherently and concisely express one’s thoughts. In my own personal definition of literacy, I not only consider being able to comprehend things (such as reading a textbook and understanding what it says) as part of being literate but also being able to explain what it is one just read. This may not be the most accurate definition of literacy, but so many things involved with writing and reading are subjective. I think that “literacy” could be something subjective and mean different things to different people. 

That being said, I perform a literacy act everyday in that I read. I always have a novel that I’m reading and though I don’t have as much time to devote to it while classes are in session, it’s still an act. I also write a great deal and make an effort for it to be as eloquent as possible. I believe I perform literacy acts everyday in class when professors ask us to think about what we read and provide comments about it. Another possible literacy act is when I am online and IMing with my friends; I’ll read what they say, think about it, and respond. Whenever I blog (for this class and my personal blog), I’m performing a literacy act. I’d also venture a guess and say that whenever I email someone, I am performing another literacy act. I’m having trouble coming up with more because I feel as though “literacy” is one of those umbrella terms that applies to so many different activities, but when it comes down to it, it is difficult to pinpoint exactly one.