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Francisco Varela English 1101 September 28, 2012 Defense Essay Starting this project I was super confused because we had so much freedom to do what we wanted and Im used to having guidelines that I have to follow, however as time went on I began to like this assignment. Since we did have the freedom to do anything we wanted I also liked it because I didnt feel constrained to one piece. So throughout this paper I hope to have informed my reader why I chose my genre to describe my literacy evolment and some of the steps that I used to construct my final project. When I finally decided what type of genre I was going to use to tell my literature upcoming. I wanted something that would help me keep track of what I was writing about and I also wanted a type of genre that wouldnt get the reader lost when he/she were reading it. For example at the end of the manual I produced a closing statement to throw of my reader. I did that because I wanted the reader to feel how I felt when I was young and I was unable to read or write English. Other points that I made in my genre were that I let the reader know in what type of environment I grew up in so that way they could picture my childhood. At one point I also added sayings that only make sense in Spanish so that the reader could imagine how it was difficult for me to communicate with my peers sometimes. Returning to the struggles I also added a situation in my genre project when the teacher embarrassed me in front of my classmates because I had miss understood a word.

Comment [FV1]: The five revision skills that Iam Going to focus on are as follos 1.Paragraph structure 2.Transitions 3.Master/Little narratives 4.Conclusion 5.Purpose

Comment [FV2]: I combined two paragraphs to compose one solid one. Comment [FV3]: Here I added a purpose statement to inform the reader well what the purpose of the paper was.

Comment [FV4]: I re-wrote this sentence to make the transition from the other paragraph have more flow.

Comment [FV5]: I f I could go back to and change this entire paragraph I would because at this point I cannot fix it because I dont exactly remember what I was talking about, but I would literary change it entirely because I sounf like robot since I feel that it has no flow.

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The starting of this project was rough because before going into conference with Mr.Borrero I had my mind set in doing a picture book sort of like a childrens book. The reason being is because it seemed like it would help me the best into putting a picture in the readers mind of the story I was telling them. After conversing with Mr.Borrero though I changed my mind because I felt that the picture book would have limit me to just being able to tell parts of my literacy movement through the parts that I could picture. What helped me get my mind set on my genre was actually when I was trying to fix my computer and I had to use an owners manual. I chose to do an owners manual because I liked how it had taken one product and divided it into sections that focus on smaller parts of the object kind of like master narratives and little narratives. This type of genre connects with my content of my literacy narrative because I had master narratives but I was having a hard time trying to make them into little narratives. It also allows me to divide my literacy narrative into sections which I wanted to do but couldnt find a way of how to get about doing it. The manual also allows the reader to understand how my literacy narrative developed. It also helps them understand where Im coming from it illustrates points in my life when I didnt know much literacy. To the point where I am now however it help me take it step by step so that the reader wouldnt get lost while reading it. While my genre also has a table content that also helps me greatly because it describes my literacy narrative and how for it wasnt as easy as for someone else I had to take it step by step. Although I felt that my genre had a lot of advantages I also felt like it had its disadvantages for example I wanted to include more visual representations of situation that I had experienced however my genre being an manual and since manuals dont have many pictures I
Comment [FV8]: Here also I changed my word choice to improve transitions. Comment [FV7]: Took two small paragraphs and compressed them into one whole one to have a better paragraph structure. Comment [FV6]: Here I would add a little narrative on what the conversion that Mr.B and I had was about and what we talked about.

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was limited to the amount of photographs that I was able to use. Another disadvantage that I can think of right of the bat is the fact that I didnt really know how to end a manual since manuals dont really have conclusion they just stop and finish talking about the product. However not all parts of my genre were disadvantages it had various advantages to comparison to other genres that I was thinking of doing. For example I was thinking of writing a song but I highly doubt that I would be able two minutes and a half but I also didnt feel like it would flow smoothly. As to the picture book I felt like it limited me to just pictures and it wouldnt allow me to explain them because if I did it explain them I feel like it would get to wordy and instead of a picture book I would have a book like The Chronicles of Narnia. Advantages that pop out to me are as follows I liked the fact that the manual helped me map out what I was going to talk about in the table of content so that way in case I lost my train of thought or I had a brain fart I could go back and look at what I was talking about. I used the table of content as an outline because I knew that if I knew what I wanted to talk about and didnt write it down I would forget by the next day. Other advantages of my genre include the fact that although I wasnt able to use as many pictures as I would have liked to. It allowed me to add small pictures that represented me or my past. One flaw to I can think of that I wanted to add but it want possible because of the type of genre that I chose was the fact that I somehow wanted to include maybe a short comic strip to depict my childhood but it just felt like it would be out of place. Maybe if I did a newspaper I wish I would have thought about the newspaper sooner. Since the newspaper is so broad and you can include a different genres into one type of genre.
Comment [FV10]: In order to improve flow I would delete this sentence because it repeats what I had stated before. Comment [FV9]: Also combined two paragraphs because I had an unnecessary break.

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Not everything was a disadvantage I liked how my type of genre allowed me to emphasis only the points that I wanted to emphasis and not include points that would have seemed as fillers. It also helped make a time line of how the events happened throughout my life that shaped and formed my literacy. As much as it helped me include things that I wanted to talk about it also help exclude things that I didnt really wanted to talk about. For example I felt that some of my years in school didnt really affect my literacy because they were a like other grades. Which made me feel that if I were to mention them that I would be repeating myself and it would cause my reader to become bored? I also chose to construct an owners manual because Im not the type of person that can write and write nonstop. I need help when it comes to writing long papers even if they double spaced so I felt that if I had a topic that I wanted to talk about I would mention it first and then go into detail but in another page. I also felt that having a topic list it gave the reader a feel of what they would be reading about. Sort of like the back cover of a book does to an interested reader or maybe even a potential reader. Its also a good way to have your ideas put out in the sun so that people are able to see them In final I chose the owners manual genre because of three simple factors that other genres that I thought of doing didnt have. The firs reason is because its organized and transfers from topic to topic smoothly. Second because it aided me with my master narratives and my little narratives by allowing me to mention what I was going to talk about first and then going into detail about the subject. As for the last reason was because I do not think that anyone else has done an owners manual as their genre therefore it makes mine unique in my opinion. One last reason I chose this topic was because Mr. B told me I should incorporate some Spanish into my genre and I felt like this genre was the only appropriate one to use Spanish in. Since now more
Comment [FV11]: This paragraph ended here however it didnt have a good structure, so in order to fix that I added it to the following paragraph.

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and more manuals come in bilingual and I can relate to them since they remind me of my childhood when I use to go to a bilingual school.
Comment [FV12]: This is my conclusion however now that I go back and re-read it I dont get the sense of closure that a conclusion should give out. SO if I could go back and see what I was thinking about I would completely change this conclusion.