Reflective Introduction
My Portfolio Exhibit examines my learning and inquiry process when gaining knowledge of my speech community and increasing my language awareness. I have learned many interesting things about my literacy and my learning process. After creating a wiki site I learned more in depth about my speech community, which allowed me, to began to understand my identity within. It forced me to do extended research on my community and as a result I learned where my community originated and how it originated. At the beginning of the semester I had no idea what a speech community was and after discovering the idea of it, I developed a sense of curiosity. The wiki readers guide and other sources helped feed my curiosity and hope for more knowledge. Writing in a daybook contributed to my increased awareness about literacy and my speech community. This class is the only English class I have ever been in that allowed me to free write without the fear of rejection or correction. Writing in a daybook was new for me because I usually have to have some type of plan or outline of my ideas before I put my thoughts and words on paper. This allowed me to just free write without having to premeditate my entire thought process. It yielded a raw outline of my thoughts and made me feel free of the “red pen” or anyone’s preconceived ideas of what I should be writing about and how it should be structurally and grammatically perfect. This changed my idea of how I viewed writing and my thought process. I now believe free writing is the best way to put your raw thoughts on paper to create a more genuine outcome that expresses who you are. Without the daybook writing I would follow the same methods of premeditating my thoughts and ideas and striving for perfection due to the constant fear of rejection. Writing my literacy narrative allowed me to connect all the ideas and conceptions of my community and applying them to my identity within it. Gaining information on where my community came from and how certain events in my life affected my literacy journey changed my perception on my community. I believe that my literacy journey has a lot to do with my speech community and how I interact with others in my community. Writing my literacy journey opened my eyes to why I am the way I am and how I have developed my level of knowledge. I never realized how little life events growing up could impact my literacy journey and how big of a role people can play in altering your journey. For me, it was mainly my father who altered my journey the most and I would never have came to this conclusion without writing my literacy journey. Because of writing in a daybook, creating a wiki readers guide, writing my literacy journey, and writing my speech community essay, my awareness about literacy has increased and I have changed my perception on my speech community and my writing process.