THINKING CRITICALLY

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In addition to modeling good writing and providing guides for reading and writing, The St. Martin’s Guide to Writing helps you think critically about your writing. Each writing assignment chapter in Part One of the Guide includes many opportunities for you to think critically and reflect on your understanding of the rhetorical situation in which you are writing. In addition, a section titled Thinking Critically concludes each chapter, giving you an opportunity to look back and reflect on how you used your writing process creatively and how you expanded your understanding of the genre. The following activity gives you the opportunity to reflect on your own experience with reading and writing, your own literacy narrative. Why not start now to become a better writer by thinking critically about your own experience?

REFLECTION

A Literacy Narrative

Write several pages telling about your experience with writing. Consider the following suggestions:

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  • Recall an early experience of writing: What did you write? Did anyone read it? What kind of feedback did you get? How did you feel about yourself?
  • Think of a turning point when your attitude toward writing changed or crystallized. What happened? What changed?
  • Recall a person—a teacher, a classmate, a family member, a published writer, or someone else—who influenced your writing, for good or ill. How was your writing affected?
  • Cast yourself as the main character of a story about writing. How would you describe yourself—as a talented writer, as someone who struggles to write well, or somewhere in between? Consider your trajectory, or narrative arc: Over the years, would you say you have showed steady improvement? Ups and downs? More downs than ups? A decline?
  • Think about literacy more broadly and write about how you acquired academic literacy (perhaps focusing on how you learned to think, talk, and write as a scientist or a historian), workplace literacy (perhaps focusing on how you learned to communicate effectively with customers or managers), sports literacy (perhaps as a player, coach, or fan), music literacy (perhaps as a performer or composer), community literacy (perhaps focusing on how you learned to communicate with people of different ages or with people who speak different languages or dialects), or any other kind of literacy you have mastered.

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