Tomberlin 1

Daniel Tomberlin English 1101 Professor: Elizabeth Hinnant September 9, 2013 Social Class Influences There are so many social forces that can impact someone's literacy narrative. What is interesting is how it has affected their writing. How you were taught to view and express reading, writing, and verbal communication is literacy narrative in a nutshell. Factors that affect could be Religion, Culture, Social Class and etc. All of these factors are critical to people's views on literacy. The major social force that impacted my literacy narrative is Social class. Social class had a very big influence on my literacy narrative because your social class is a label in today's society and it majorly affects all three parts of literacy narrative. The three main parts to literacy narrative is reading, writing, and verbal communications. The affects Social class had on me in all three of these categories is truly amazing and interesting. There are a lot of factors to influence a person's literacy narrative but social class subconsciously impacted me the greatest and made me who I am today. Social class affected my reading more than anything when I was growing up. Throughout my younger years of school there were a lot of middle to upper class salaries, and to be normal there was a necessity to be able to read in the first grade. Family life is very important and your social status reflects your family in a lot of ways. My dad was very poor when he was younger and to be where he is today he had to work extra hard and never quit. So when I was growing up never quitting and competitiveness was hereditary because of how my dad lived his life. I remember my literacy example so well because one day we had free time and almost all of my
Comment [B7]: I dont necessarily think it was hereditary. Consider your word choice here. Comment [B6]: How so? This is a very vague statement. Comment [B5]: I dont know what this means. Comment [B4]: Didnt you already say this? Comment [B3]: Again, I dont think you need to explain the perimeters of the assignment. Comment [B1]: I think you can come up with something more creative than this! Comment [B2]: I dont know that you need to mention that this is a literacy narrative outright. Try to tell your reader the purpose of your paper without telling them its an assignment.

Tomberlin 2

class mates picked up simple books and started to read. I was almost in shock and just picked up a book to pretend to read because I really didn't know how to read. I couldn't make the connection back then but your academic ability at such an early age is based on a lot of your family life and how your parents raised you. Everybody thought I could read because of my social status but my parents had no desire to teach me until I was ready. That night I wanted to know how to read and the next day it clicked and I started to read. Ever since that day I wanted to be really good at reading and I kept on getting better. In the third grade I was reading on a 6th grade level and I was passing all my test with one hundreds. Because of my Social class I was expected to have the ability to read and when I couldn't it inspired me to be good at something I was not good at. This example made me the reader I am today and I am very thankful for what happened and how it changed me. Even though I could read really well my writing was never up to par. There are a lot of reasons I do not like writing, some say because writing is used as punishment when they are younger and they tend to think of it badly but I simply do not like expressing myself by writing mainly because I was never good at it. This could be because I was not taught the way I needed to learn, either way I cannot stand writing. I remember the first writing test we ever had in public school was in the third grade and it was a practice writing test. I was very nervous and could not write very well, so I completely bombed the test and lost all hope in writing. I did the same thing on fourth grade writing test and I still did not understand why. During this time in education we finally were learning how to write and how to make it sound good. I learned that I could not write well because the topics we had to write about were not appealing to me and I proved this on my seventh grade writing test. I realized that everything my family did or was accustomed to, was what I could really write well
Comment [B10]: I dont see how this paragraph relates to your social force or your literacy. This is just your opinion on writing which, for the purposes of this narrative, Im not interested in. I want to know how your class affected your writing, not whether you like it or not. Comment [B8]: This is very much in the format of I came, I saw, I conquered. You arent explaining very much to me. Why do you think your parents held off on teaching you to read, despite the social expectation to? Can you tell me about this story in more detail? It takes more than one night to learn how to read (typically). Comment [B9]: You still havent told me WHY you were expected to read, or how that expectation ties in with social class.

Tomberlin 3

to because I could relate to those topics. Most of the things your family is able to do is based on your social class such as vacations, sporting events, and restraints. Those examples are what I was familiar to and when I wrote about them my writing was so much better than the topics I really didn't care for. On my seventh grade writing test the topic was about something I could relate to. The topic was; if you were able to go to your sons classroom for career day what career would you be in and what would you do with the kids the whole day you were there. From that moment I thought, finally I have a topic that I can correlate to my life. A month later I received my grade and the overall grade was one point away from perfection. Now I know why I wrote so well and it is because my family life included a lot of sports and when I wrote about that it was really amazing because I went into detail on what I could do with the kids. Without knowing it my families social class affected my paper by the experiences I was fortunate to have been through. Even now I try to relate to a topic however I can. This helps my writing a lot and hopefully I can focus on the more challenging parts of writing. Writing isn't the only way you communicate to someone. You have to be able to talk to communicate to someone. I always knew how to talk but I learned how to talk to someone who is older than me at a manor school. A person's social class usually reflects their manors and etiquette. This is because people in a social class usually interact with families in their social class. My communication was affected by this because my parents were always strict and they wanted me to be successful. When I was ready in their eyes they sent my brother and I to a manor school. At the manor school I was shocked at how different the atmosphere was and I did not want to stand out by talking stupidly. I noticed how a respected person talked because when a respected person talks you can tell they are educated and they can communicate with anybody. I made sure I could

Comment [B11]: What were these topics and how did you relate to them?

Comment [B12]: I can see the connection youre trying to make here, but Im not sure youre following it through entirely.

Comment [B13]: This paragraph and the last are very short. In revision, consider what you want each of them to accomplish and then decide if you think they are accomplishing those goals.

Comment [B14]: You may need to explain to your reader what manor school is.

Tomberlin 4

interact with everybody else by having a conversation that was relatable to anybody. At the end of the day I realized why someone talks like they are educated and it is because a worker who is educated and sounds educated can do a job better than someone who is not. So why not sound educated and be educated to get the job. A little political debate is another example that helped my communication. Social class for the most part reflects your political views in society. In my hometown most cases the lower class are democrats and the middle to higher class are republicans. The presidential reelection this year was a big deal to my family and I knew all about it and was very biased towards one candidate. In class one day my teacher was talking to another classmate about a debate and I chimed in with a little witty joke. He liked it and then all of a sudden started talking about it. He was bring facts up and it was very interesting to argue your side. During the argument I found myself searching for words that I wanted to say. Later that day I realized I needed to broaden my vocabulary to sound more intelligent. Social class helped my speech because I had the opportunity to interact with respected people and because of this I try to improve my speech all the time so I can viewed as intelligent. Social class had deeply affected my reading, writing, and verbal communication in so many ways I do not even know yet. There are a lot of factors to influence a person's literacy narrative but social class subconsciously impacted me the greatest and made me who I am today. Learning how to read was a very humbling matter and the procedure of learning affects me every day because that is how I approach most problems today. The process of figuring how to write correctly made me have the ability to express myself other than talking. The experiences I was able to have really helped me see who I wanted to portray and that is why I talk the way I do. These three major components of literacy narrative have all been touched by social class and

Comment [B15]: Like what? How? You seem to speak almost entirely in generalizations.

Comment [B16]: Again, Im not entirely sure what connection youre trying to make in this paragraph.

Comment [B17]: I dont think one sentence can comprise a whole paragraph.

Tomberlin 5

believe or not everyone's literacy narrative has too. Everything in society revolves around social class and be it bad or good it truly makes you the person you are today.

Daniel, Though there are certainly spots where I can see the connections youre trying to make, overall I had a hard time understanding your narrative. I think most of this has to do with the fact that youre writing only in generalizations and vague terms. I don t really see how you connect reading, writing, or verbal communication back to social class, other than in the example of manor school (and thats only because I dont think most people could afford this type of education). You write that your parents didn t teach you how to read until you were ready, but I have no idea what that has to do with class. You write that you hate writing and can only write about sports or vacations, but this is still a really vague connection. Im not rich by any means, but that doesnt mean that Ive never attended a sporting event or had a vacation. Everything here is just so broad that I find myself getting lost repeatedly. In revision you really, really need to focus on talking in specific terms. Give examples and personal experiences to back up your arguments, and make sure that you can find a clear thread between point A and point B so that your reader can understand your argument in the first place (i.e. My social class affected my reading in this very specific way and heres an example from my past thats going to prove that what Im saying is true and makes sense). If you find yourself struggling to write in this way, I highly suggest working with a tutor at the Writing Resources Center in Cameron. Also, please dont hesitate to e-mail me with any questions or concerns.