The Secret Language of Comics: Visual Thinking and Writing

Literacy Narrative pt. 1 Reflection

My process for writing this narrative consisted of me drawing out a time line on a piece of paper and marking it with important dates that had to do with reading and/or writing. I just started putting down as many memories as I could remember without thinking about what they were or how all the memories fit together. When I stepped back and looked at the timeline, I realized that there was a clear pattern of my experience reading. I found it surprising that as a kid I read so much, and all of a sudden, I didn’t read books at all. I hadn’t even realized that I had done that because I was always so distracted using my phone. I think the most interesting sentence in my essay is: “As time went on I slowly spent more and more time using my phone and less time reading, which led to less motivation to write.” I believe that this sentence highlights how my love for reading slowly deteriorated as I spent more time using technology. This sentence is also very relatable for many other teens as I feel as if my experience is shared among many of my peers. 

Literacy Narrative:

https://wordpress.com/block-editor/page/nixstudent.wordpress.com/29

Reflection for Literacy Narrative Part 1

In my Literacy Narrative, I explored how being a slow reader in Kindergarten had a lasting impact on how I viewed myself and prevented me from growing because I was too afraid to admit that I wasn’t a good reader. This sentiment is captured in the sentence: “From a young age I compared myself to those around me and concealed my insufficiencies, rather than working to improve them.” This sentence is especially interesting to readers because it explains how it was not the typical cognitive challenges that prevented me from becoming a more proficient reader, but rather it was my social anxiety about not measuring up.

I enjoyed being tasked with thinking about old childhood memories because not often do I get the chance to reminisce on old significant moments in my life. Since I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting on my reading career particularly in the last year, I was already cognizant of my evolution as a reader; however, through writing out and analyzing these memories I gained greater insight into how my social anxieties about measuring up to others shaped the way I viewed myself as a reader for so many years. The initial process of free writing contributed to my narrative in that it made it more anecdotal, whereas otherwise I would have adhered to a more traditional analytical essay style.

Click here to read the whole narrative: https://isabelwallgren.wordpress.com/literacy-narrative/

Literacy Narrative, Part 1 Reflection Post

LITERACY NARRATIVE PART 1 REFLECTION

The process of writing the literacy narrative seemed unconventional to me. I’ve never had to include images in my writing. The freewriting exercises felt a bit strange. I’ve never undergone the process of writing in a limited amount of time about anything that comes to mind. Though by the time I finished writing my narrative, I realized that I was a critic of sorts. Throughout high school, I became more selective about fantasy novels in particular. 

I want fantasy novels to at least have the theme of moral ambiguity, and extensive character development is a requirement for me. While writing the narrative I felt like I limited reading to only novels and fiction, but at the same time I had to understand my rhetorical situation and to write keeping in mind the constraints listed, so, I focused on the aspects of reading novels. I chose two images to incorporate into my writing. The first image is a representation of dark fantasy while the second image shows the dark and gloomy world of A Song of Ice and Fire.

The most interesting sentence: “Moral ambiguity, meticulous character development and the overcomplication of the struggle between good and evil made the series unique. I felt that we like Martin’s characters are forced to navigate the world with different definitions of morality. Martin showed that as in Game of Thrones you have to be a snake to “climb the ladder” in the real world. There is no good or bad”.

Literacy Narrative URL: https://haiderblogcom.wordpress.com/blog/blog/


Image source: https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&source=images&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwim9s21-8rkAhVtZN8KHab9CvUQjhx6BAgBEAI&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ibmastery.com%2Fblog%2Fhow-to-write-ib-extended-essay-reflections&psig=AOvVaw2mTip22z1RcG3NeVc3FbFd&ust=1568366695740982

About My About Me

Traveling in a time machine of self-reflection, I have returned with a few artifacts of my past and created an About Me page (which is titled “my life stuff” because I’m apparently quite extra). Therein lay the books that impacted the impressionable young me, teaching me lessons that are at once profound and pointless; in short, they perfectly applied to life.

Picking out several parts from the cactus of childhood memories has reopened a few wounds, especially the heartache and despair that accompanied those final chapters of Old Yeller ⁠— it is an universal truth: all dog books are bad news. Yet those referenced tales have become a part of me in some way, so I guess there’s no use in protesting the pain of a few pages.

I, however, have learned a solemn and sad truth: I am not the reader I once was. My elementary-school self would annihilate me with his AR-test prowess in a second. Yet I shouldn’t be so swift to disparage my present state, for though I may not read as much on my “free time,” I am positively plowing through more pages than my little third-grade mind could ever handle. Thank goodness for this, too, for my lack of progress would have made quite the frightening example of the American school system.

A picture is worth a thousand words, so expect the word count of that page to climb quite quickly as I add in a few extra stick figures here and there. Like the family fridge, it will only display my best drawings, so don’t expect too much.

Literacy Narrative Pt. 1: Reflection Post

How do we gain confidence as readers and writers? For me, my confidence relied heavily on the approval of my teachers. It wasn’t until recently that I understood the value of my creative process and the work that it produces.

Finding the content for my literacy narrative was easy because I can pinpoint specific moments in my academic career that had strong affects on my reading and writing, but finding the words to encapsulate those moments was difficult. I felt uncomfortable writing about writing because it made me hypercritical of my work. It was a feeling that worked well with my narrative considering how I discovered a main part of the process in creating good writing is being comfortable feeling uncomfortable. Not everything I write will be my best work, but I have to start somewhere and trust my process.

Link to my page: https://marlieswords.wordpress.com/?page_id=48

Reflection: Literacy Narrative, Part 1

In my narrative, “Visualization, Imagination, and Immersive Experience”, I come to the conclusion that my language learning experience and my personality have led me to read and write with visualization and imagination. They bring me immersive reading and writing experiences from which I derive a lot of enjoyment.

Reading and writing are so common in the daily life that I was not aware of the typical way I read and write until I reflected upon my past experiences. Therefore, the pre-writing before I read and thought about the prompt was a crucial step. It helped me identify patterns, develop my thesis, and support my arguments with my own experiences. The way I write also manifested itself during the process – “I would first think of a scene as detailed as possible and turned it into words.” In pre-writing, I elaborated on three scenes that went as specific as “Through the leaves and branches, the late summer sunlight came from the windows on my left, leaving light spots on my favorite book, Stories of the Romans.” Visualization and imagination are pivotal elements of my reading and writing habits. Even now when I am writing this reflection post, I have the pictures of me in my head sitting in a booth and drafting my essay.

With the materials in hand, I started to work on the literacy narrative. I identified my language learning experience in my childhood and my introversion to be the most influential factors. The structure, however, was a little bit complex. Not only did I have two factors to discuss, but I also had two subjects – the way I read and the way I write – to analyze. Furthermore, the two factors seemed to shape my reading and writing habits in different periods of my life, of which I was not aware at the beginning. I felt weird reading my first draft and resorted to a writing tutor. The tutor also found the structure complicated and suggested drawing it out on paper. As I pointed out in my essay, visuals helped me think and communicate. I drew a graph that divided my essays into six parts, and we discussed and moved around those blocks to make the logic flow smoothly. And it worked pretty well.

Using Dan Roam’s terminology, I am a visual thinker, yet just a “Yellow Pen”. I employ visuals and imagination to process the information, like reading or writing, but I am far far away from an artist. As a result, I depend heavily on words even when I am making a graph or illustration. I really enjoy the class readings so far and look forward to the following assignments that require more visuals and creativity.

Literacy Narrative Part 1 Reflection

Writing my first literary narrative was a lot easier than I expected. This was becasue of the free write that we had to do before. I initially had no idea what I was going to write about and was at a complete loss. However after answering the questions prompted in the free write, all my ideas began to flow a lot smoother. After that, all I had to do was just formulate those thoughts into my final product. I chose to begin my narrative from the beginning, when I was much younger, and then tell the story of how, to this day, technology affects the way I read and write. I tried to be as honest as possible in my narrative and as a result learned a lot about my true reading and writing habits.

Link to my Literacy Narrative Part 1: https://apgwriting.wordpress.com/literacy-narrative-part-1/

Literacy Narrative Reflection

I found the freewriting exercises different from the experience of writing the literacy narrative itself, although I did find it helpful. I ended up using one of the free writes almost verbatim in my literacy narrative. That one sparked some deeper level ideas about my own progression and a writer and reader.

In the process of writing my narrative, I discovered that my anxiety has more control over my work ethic and my perception of myself than I originally thought. In my narrative I explored how my relationship with writing has been both hindered and helped by my anxiety.

Overall, writing the literacy narrative was difficult for me – but writing always is a labor-intensive process for me. This assignment, however, bore much reward in the sense that it made me reexamine what powers my writing and what inspires me to read.

Link to my literacy narrative (pt 1): https://trinityinenglish.wordpress.com/literacy-narrative-part-1/

Reflection Post: Literacy Narrative

My writing process for my narrative came in waves. In order to write this narrative I had to put myself back in time when it was very difficult for me to understand to speak, read, or write in English. The free writing exercises were beneficial to me because it allowed me to focus on writing utilizing my senses. I learned that my writing abilities have improved so much in part to the people who have supported me such as my friends and teachers. The most interesting sentence i my essay would have to be ” As I sat in an isolated area of the classroom, I felt like I was trapped in a box with all my thoughts struggling to be released. ”

Literacy Narrative:

https://wordpress.com/block-editor/page/andresvelasquez905687008.wordpress.com/35

Literacy Narrative, Part One Reflection Post

https://oreadenikinju.wordpress.com/literacy-narrative-part-one/

My narrative goes through the different stages of my life and how my experiences have really impacted my view and interest in reading and writing. From America, to Nigeria, then back to America, there were a myriad of different aspects and circumstances which influenced and ultimately determined how I read and write.

Being that this assignment was freewriting, I did not feel really pressed to write a certain way or fit a specific mold. After looking at a few posts to see how others were writing, I simply opened a new document and began to write as it came to me. Writing this narrative painted a clearer picture in my mind of where a lot of my reading and writing habits came from. There were not any surprising moments for me but rather, it felt like I could properly explain the different sources of my style of reading and writing.

“Even as a child, I was able to understand the power of how words can be intertwined with images to create something greater than both of them individually”. I believe this is the most interesting sentence from my narrative mainly because it relates a lot back to this class specifically. Prior to this class, I had honestly forgotten what a significant role that comics played in my life as a child. This narrative helped me delve deeper into my memory and remember my previous interest for comics.

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