Lauren's Literacy Narrative

      Besides a few select geniuses, most people had to be taught how to read. Although I was arrogant enough to call myself a genius when I was a child, I too needed to be taught. It became clear early on that my reading comprehension was at a higher level than my peers. By first grade I could read books meant for middle schoolers. My parents nourished my love of reading, but in two drastically different ways. Because they encouraged me to develop my literacy skills, Deborah Brandt would call them my literacy sponsors. Brandt defines a literacy sponsor as “a delivery system for the economies of literacy, the means by which these forces present themselves to – and through – individual learners” ("Sponsors of Literacy", p. 167). She refers to a metaphorical delivery system, but my parents were literally delivering the materials necessary to sponsor my literacy since I was a kid with no money to buy books.     Each parent will get an individual post, but the gist of their influ

The traditional meaning of literacy is the ability to read and write. This simple definition of literacy is no longer reflective of the complex understanding required to engage with modern technology and social media. New literacy, for example, is the ability to discern that the email in the image below is sent by a robot with the intent to scam the receiver. An obviously fake advertisement meant to phish the recipient's data.     As for the writing aspect, an example of new media literacy is the ability to compose a blog post (which is what I'm doing right now). The most elegant prose in the world means nothing if it's illegable because of formatting errors and a bad font. Although the narrative I'm remediating is about my journey with the traditional meaning of literacy, I wouldn't be able to use this genre without basic knowledge of the mechanics of a blog website.

     The final project of my Introduction to Academic Writing course is genre remediation, which means remixing a previous assignment into a new genre. Genre in layman's terms is merely a descriptive word that dictates the category of a film, book, or song. Before diving into my project, however, a more scholarly definition needs to be given. Kerry Dirk defines genre as "tools to help people get things done" ( Navigating Genres, pg 252). By this definition, genre gives the writer a response based on precedent to respond to a rhetorical situation.     The fun thing about genres is that there's a myriad of choices you can make in one that you can't in another. For example, it would be improper to include a meme on an academic essay. On a blog post, however?     BOOM. Meme.     This is an example of the constraints being different — essays require a formal tone, versus the causualness of a blog post. I point out a difference such as this because I will be converting