Literacy Autobiography
Invention Questions

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The following questions/prompts will help you focus on your personal experiences.

1. You have encountered many definitions of literacy in the essays you studied in the exam unit. Write a personal definition that embodies your current attitude toward literacy.

2. Describe what factors have changed your previous attitude toward literacy. List particular facts or arguments you encountered while reading the literacy essays and through the discussions you had with your group that made you reconsider your earlier conceptions of literacy.

3. Recall a literate experience in your life (either text bound or a different medium such as music, art, dance, etc) that was particularly meaningful to you.

4. Why was this experience significant in shaping your understanding of the impact of literacy on your life? How were you able to "read the world" differently after this experience?

· Topic Development

1. Make a list of specific details you can recall about the person/event that you plan to develop into an essay.

2. Are there any significant details that you have forgotten? List any gaps in the story that will need to be filled in.

3. Why did this event/person have a significant impact on your attitude toward literacy? If you were to write your autobiography in later years would you still look back on this experience as noteworthy?

4. How comfortable are you in revealing details of this experience to the class and the instructor? If you had to leave out any details that are too personal, are there other aspects of the story that you could enlarge upon that would arouse the interest of the reader and retain the significance of the experience? Explain.