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So I threw the paper away and started again. I thought that obviously she didn’t want “we went to the museum.” So I started with, “once upon a time.” And the teacher looked at me and said, “That’s wrong.” I looked at her like “what do you want?” I struggled with it and I wrote the same beginning again and again—The teacher never did tell me why it was wrong. She never said anything about that kind of writing. She just kept saying, “it’s wrong, it’s wrong.” That got me very frustrated. I’ll never forget that experience. Now, this year, composition (course number) under (English professor’s name) I’d turn in a paper and get it back immediately—having to revise it. She said, “and the ideas are all good, but the way you say it is wrong.” And I thought to myself, “oh, that’s what writing is about.” I always thought it was about sentence structure—that’s all. So I said, “fine, ok, I will,” and took back the paper and revised it. I enjoyed learning much more from that class than from any other. That’s it for writing. This excerpt follows a three-part discursive pattern: (1) State of Struggle (“That got me very frustrated”), (2) Signal Event Interrupting the Struggle (“Now this year in [our course number]”) and (3) State of Success (“I learned much more from that class than from any other”). This three-part discursive pattern is also prevalent in the literacy life stories of the English majors. The third and final theme accessed in the English majors’ literacy life stories is “Literacy as Personal Discovery.” In one story, the student describes how she first got interested in reading. She was alone and reading a book when she first noticed a bad word, which led her to believe that books were the entrance to a world beyond her home environment where things like bad words were forbidden. Excerpt 5 English Major: Literacy as Personal Discovery Until much later when I was about nine and a half, near age ten, when I picked up a book and opened it up, read a little of it and thought to myself, “so?!” 204 Kathleen M. Wood And then I turned the page and it jumped out at me! There it was! A bad word! That was it! I was completely fascinated. You see, in my house at the time, bad words were forbidden. I could speak—a long time ago I was just hard of hearing and I could talk. So anytime I was mad, or in an intense discussion I was always super tempted to blast out some dirty word but I couldn’t. So that book, like talked to me! I liked it. It really fit! So I kept reading and turning the pages and finally got it! That the words all had a purpose and had meaning. Even the bad words. So that was the first novel I ever read. When I was nine. In this excerpt, we can see that the student describes one reading event that had a very big impact on her—she realized that books had language and words that were forbidden in her everyday life. She, literally as a Personal Discovery Story, discovered the freedom that literacy would afford her. In another, the student explains how (in kindergarten) he got turned on to reading because of the book corner that the teacher had set up. Excerpt 6 English Major: Literacy as Personal Discovery I remember that in kindergarten we had a book corner, where the books were lined up. And there were picture books—Oh, I really enjoyed that so much. I’d read things all the way through without stopping. I think it was then that I fell in love with reading —And I have been ever since. Closer examination of the systems of logic accessed by the English majors reveals the following list of logics that were indexed: 1. One way to literacy is with hearing people. 2. Hearing people obstruct the way to literacy. 3. Persistent struggles to literacy lead to eventual success. 4. Literacy is a state of mind, a state of knowing. 5. Literacy is achieved by personal involvement. 6. Literacy is an incremental process. 7. Literacy is the means to know the world, one’s place in that world, and of worlds beyond the ones we are in. English Literacy in the Life Stories...

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