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Yuanxu Liu (Abby)

Professor C.Pierson

27 September 2017

A Friend Group

The community of my research paper is a friend group. I have lots of friends and

many groups but I just want to talk about one group that I am close to. I have a group of my

best friends in America, there are five people in our small group. We all come from China

and same high school in America. One of them is my close friend, I have known her about

four years before I came here. We chat every day although our group members are not in

same city. We shared interesting stories about ourselves, like I always share pictures of my

dog. I have a cute dog and his name is Benny. Last night I sent a picture which my dog was

asleep on bed and it looks like a baby. That was so cute and funny. When I sent this picture to

them, they all said they also want have a dog.

Except we share funny thing we also share ideas and suggestions with others. As an

international student, English is not our native language. So learning English is the most

important thing for us. As we all know, learning a new language is not an easy thing. We help

each other with English and schoolworks. For me, they all are literacy sponsors in varying

degrees. As far as I am concerned, literacy sponsors have changed over time in my life.

Literacy sponsors can be everyone, like family, teachers and friends even books. When I was

a kid, my early literacy sponsors were my parents, teachers, and story books. My parents get

me all the literacy tools such as story books and stationery. They also teach me how to read

and write my name. In our group, my literacy sponsor would be all members. They gave
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some ideas that I never thought. However my most influential literacy sponsor in my friend

group is my close friend.

When I was in high school, I got lots of help from my close friend. We had a great

time during the whole high school years and our relationship more closer. As a literacy

sponsor, she helps me with my English writing and almost all aspects of English. Actually,

now my English is better than before. I still remember last year me and her were both learned

Romeo And Juliet in English class and we discussed a lot a about this book in our group.

Romeo and Juliet is one of the famous plays of Shakespeare all literary works. This story

took place in Renaissance period and around two noble families to tell a sad love story.

Particularly impresses me was we discussed their love story. When I first time read the end of

this story, I feel so upset. Romeo and Juliet cannot marry with each other over all things even

death. We discussed if their families were not opposite, maybe they can get marry. But she

said if their families were not opposite, they also cannot get marry. She told us the reason was

for some noblemen in renaissance period, they needed to obey their parents and marry

someone else, such as in the case of an arranged marriage, it means be marry with another

noblemen even you don't know. After she said that we all sigh for those noblemen. Since this

discussion, we all learned some new ideas from literature and we all know learning is a

lifelong process.

We also as a non-literary literacy sponsor for each other. For example, I help them

with math. When they have questions on math, they will ask me for help and I always teach

them step by step. They also help me at some situation. When my laptop not working, they

help me to fix it. And sometimes they will give me some useful suggestions. Our motivations
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are help each other to feel better in different situations.All these literacy sponsors play a

significant role in my study and they provide the information that I need for life.

Discourse is closely related to literacy. But Discourse and discourse are different,

discourse means connected stretches of language that make sense, so discourse is part of

Discourse. Discourses are ways of being in the world; they are form of life which integrate

words, acts, values, beliefs, attitudes, and social identities as well as gestures, glances, body

positions, and clothes. A Discourse is a sort of identity kitwhich comes complete with the

appropriate costume and institutions on how to act , talk, and often write , so as to take on a

particular role that others will recognize.(p. 278) It is a costume or set of instructions that

makes us recognizable to people and it gives what we do meaning in specific social contexts.

Family is an important Discourse that you can learn something. For example, how

discourse and literacy connect with each other. When you are a little boy or girl, family tell

you who you are. When you grow up, family teach you how to get into the swing of things in

school or society. Everyone has different identity at different situations even different time.

Similarly, I change identity from home to my group, I'm a student at group and I'm a kid at

home. My small group also is an important Discourse for me, also a primary discourse that

means the one use first, people often say make good friends and they will be good teachers of

us. Of course, they are. We spend too much time at school with friends, so their words and

behaviors will affect us deeply. when I meet difficulties in school, I can tell my small group

and they will tell me how to figure out. When I feel unhappy, I also talk with my group they

are the best listener for me. They tell jokes that makes me feel better. When I complete an
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essay, I will send this essay to my group and they will give me some suggestions and tell me

which part I need change and which part is good.

For example, I complete my essay and it about the importance of education. In this

case I am the writer. My culture, opinion and my thought affect I write about education and I

write it by contrasting Chinese education with American education. The audience will be my

group members or to whom I am writing. The exigence is a problem that can be addressed

and solved through rhetorical discourse. So the exigence would be I am trying to make my

audiences understand this essay or I just want have a good grade. The constraints for this case

would be linguistic constraints or lack of focus even the reader's expectation. Maybe my

opinion is different from the audiences opinion. This is a commonly situation, we have

different thought and goals. As a writer, we need to know writing exists in a specific

rhetorical context and it meant to be read by an audience. The audiences would be an

important part of rhetorical situation.

Connecting with my writing process, honestly I do not have a certain writing process.

For me, when I write a essay, I will think about the topic of this essay. If I do not understand

the topic, I will ask teachers or classmates to help me understand. I think it is useful to help

me understand topic and also give me some ideas. I like write a main sentence first and make

a outline around this main sentence. After that I will think about the contains about the main

sentence and use my words to explain my opinions. Then I will search some more

informations to make my essay clearly. By the way, I like write something without music,

cause I can not focus on writing with music. I like writing that can improve my writing skill

even my English skill.

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Above all, literacy more like something that you can use reading or writing on

discourse and also depends on your reading skill and writing skill. The skill is an essential

ingredient of literacy. And writing is separated into literacy activities. That means any

activities made possible through a text and writing is a learning process. First, it can improve

our ability to use words of writing. For example, in order to write a good English essay, we

must use every word carefully as much as possible to ensure it's correct. During the process,

we have improved our ability of using words and writing skills imperceptibly. In this aspect,

writing is a good way to build our ability. Then, writing is an effective way to enlarge our

vocabulary. Different compositions we write need different vocabularies. Therefore, we can

get more vocabularies from more essays we write. At the same time, it is helpful to our

reading. Last, writing is crucial in becoming a good reader and requires us to stretch our

thinking. In a word, writing is an important skill, especially for language learners. So we

should improve our writing ability as much as possible to improve our overall levels.

As important as writing and reading, especially reading literature books. On the one

hand, reading literature books can let us know the culture of a country. The books always

reflects a countrys history, so that we can know more about the countrys culture in books.

They will broaden their vision. On the other hand, the characters in the books are successful

persons, we can learn good things from them. The books always describe the characters to get

over all kinds of difficulties and never give up to get successfully in the end. Those stories are

best examples to teach us become a good person. Reading the literature books helps us grow

up fast. There are some reason for why we need now, we just know the surface of literacy,
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but we still need literacy. It is the light that guides us to move on and expand our horizons.

There no doubt that we learning how to writing and reading in literature.

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Citations
Gee, James paul. Literacy, Discourse, And Linguistics. Writing About Writing .