Literacy Narrative Reflection

Choosing what topic to write my literacy narrative about was pretty easy for me. I've always been drawn language and the differences between my language and other languages. So when it came time to pick a topic for this paper, the first thing I thought of was my connection to language and how that is , in return, connected to literacy and my perception of it. For the past four years I have been taking German, and I can honestly say that my love for that language has opened so many doors for me. It was completely obvious that this was the perfect topic for my literacy narrative. In fact, all of my notecard ideas had some kind of connection to language. I decided to start with a memory I had about talking to my host mother during my stay in Germany back in 2009. This was the base for my literacy narrative and I built on it by adding connections between my experiences and the reading 'Mother Tongue'. My first draft was a solid piece that covered all of the basics of an essay that I learned in high school. I had an intro, body paragraphs, and a conclusion. But that format didn't seem to completely fit my topic the way I wanted it to. In my second draft, I tried a more relaxed approach and voice. I feel like it worked well, but I'm not use to writing in that style so it was a little uncomfortable. My final draft was a good mix of both the first and second. I think I completed my editing goals by trying something different. I figured out that for me, it is easier to write in a more structured way, but that that approach doesn't always return the best product. Writing and revising this paper helped me see that it is ok to try new styles of writing and that sometimes that can be the best thing to do. In the future if I feel that a particular piece of writing is too bland I think I will refer back to this and maybe just switch it up completely just to see what would come of it. I think revising in this way also helped me stay away from writers block because I wasn't concentrating on my writing being a particular way.