Introduction: In Deborah Brandt’s essay “Sponsors of Literacy,” Brandt describes the process of how people become literate, the effect of their experiences, and influential people on their learning. The term that Brandt uses frequently to describe those who have a profound influence on a child’s learning is “literacy sponsor.” She defines literacy sponsors as, “Agents, local or distant, concrete, or abstract, who enable, support, teach, model, as well as recruit, regulate, suppress, or withhold literacy—and gain advantage by it in some way,” (Wardle 46). Essentially, Brandt is saying that every literate person has had the support of a person or idea that inspires their desire to read and write. The concept of sponsorship can be applied to fields outside of reading and writing too. There are sponsors of science, sponsors of art, and sponsors of medicine. Similarly, these sponsor help students learn to understand the principles of their individual fields. This paper focuses on the sponsorship of first-year and second-year University of Minnesota Medical School students from the Nu Sigma Nu fraternity. Data was collected through interviews with four students from this fraternity. The guiding question for this research paper was, “Can Brandt’s definition of literacy sponsor be applied to other fields of learning, such as the medical field.” If it is found that the definition for sponsorship can be applied to the medical field, then sponsorship can be applied to other
Literacy impacts everyone’s lives in various ways. Such as, someone and their career, the ability to read literature in general, one’s comprehension of reading and writing, or the ability to write a book. Each person takes his or her own path with literacy and consequently are formed by the sponsors of literacy present in his or her life. Being new to the term or not, sponsors come in various forms and can be positive or negative to someone and his or her literacy. The sponsors of whom I am going highlight are my parents, The Sesame Street Show, and my elementary and middle school St. Mary’s all of whom have been positive sponsors to my literacy by setting high expectations and providing quality teaching, which still impacts my literacy today.
“Sponsors of Literacy”, written by Deborah Brandt, is an academic journal article that attempts to define literacy sponsorship, as well as connect literacy as an economic development to literacy as an individual development. Brandt studied literacy sponsorship by conducting 100 interviews from a varied group of people all born in the same century. Brandt concludes that a literacy sponsor is anyone or anything that influences a person to read or write, weather it be in a positive or negative way. A literacy sponsor usually benefits in a direct or indirect way. Brandt also found that there are three factors that influence people’s literacy: stratification of opposition, competition and reappropriation. In order to show stratification of opposition,
In “Sponsors of Literacy,” author Deborah Brandt attempts to explain literacy, its history, and how there are influences that form the way we learn and practice literacy. Brandt argues that the forces that influence an individual’s literacy are sponsors of literacy. Some “forces” that Brandt discusses are influential people, such as parents, siblings, teachers, and mentors. Other forces can include culture, race, gender, language and location, access to technology, and politics. Brandt described several events in our history to help define what exactly a sponsor of literacy is. She spent several years interviewing people from all walks of life to find their unique literacy history and used them as examples in her writing. Varying ages, backgrounds, and sponsors indicate that literacy changes with each generation and is viewed as a valued commodity.
The article called “Literacy: A Lineage” by Melanie Luken and she wrote about her experience of her love for reading and writing. She became interesting to reading and writing because of her dad who one, which inspired and encouraged her to became interesting to reading and writing. She enjoyed writing the poems about her dad and her that they went to riding the bikes. She has developed her ability to understand her literacy of reading and writing because her father taught her. Her quote, “In the same way, my passion for reading and writing developed in me through the influence of my father who has a deep love of literature himself” (Luken 133). That is meaning father loves literacy so he taught
Throughout Dwayne Lowery’s life he encountered quite a few Literary Sponsors, as we all have. “Any agent, local or distant, concrete or abstract, who enable, support, teach, model, as well as recruit, regulate, suppress, or withhold literacy”, is Brandt’s definition of such in her essay Sponsors of Literacy published 1998. From home to school, competition to co-workers, sponsors may take form in many ways
Learning to read and write as a child is an experience that all can relate to. The average child learns to read and write at the early ages of three and four. Developing literacy at an early age is crucial to academic development as well as to performance in life. Early development can be just what a child needs to stimulate their minds, which in turn is assisting in the evolution of their future. The early and latter stages of development in a child’s literacy journey are the makings for their reading and writing skills. It also plays part in their analysis of obstacles as well as their developed or problematic literacy future. A child
When thinking about ones literacy, what first comes to mind is reading and writing, but literacy can cover many other aspects of life. It is usually not until a student reaches his or her college years that they realize they are “literate” in anything they are passionate about. This could include sports, technology or music because literacy is defined as “fluency in any given topic” (Writing about Writing 798). I am literate in lacrosse, a sport with rules and vocabulary that most people don’t know about and frankly I would have no idea about those things either if it weren’t for the people that helped me become literate in the sport. Sponsors of literacy often turn up in people’s memories when asked about how he or she became fluent in their
From early on in school you learn that reading is going to be something truly important in your life and are given books to read all the time, but at what point did you actually start to accept and enjoy reading in your life? Literacy sponsors are “the people, institutions, materials, and motivations” (Deborah Brandt (167)) that shape who you are as a reader, in my life my literacy sponsor was my grandparents since they are the ones who gave me many of my favorite books and helped me keep up with my older cousins’.
I can recall many people who have enriched my literacy development in some way or another throughout my life. The most influential literacy sponsors in my life include my mother, myself, my high school English teacher, and even my librarian. Even the authors Deborah Brandt, and Malcom X have supported my claim. The essay, “Sponsors of Literacy” was written by Deborah Brandt, who connected her writing with her sponsors. Malcom X’s essay, “Learning to Read”, reminded me of one of the most important things I know. These people, myself included, have made a crucial impact on the literacy information I have and will always need in order to succeed with literature and in life itself.
The idea of Sponsors of Literacy was originally proposed by Deborah Brandt in her 1998 article, “Sponsors of Literacy.” In her article, she argued that Sponsors of Literacy include people, institutions, and circumstances; they vary based on the person’s experiences and surroundings. Sponsors of literacy are essential in everyone’s life due to the powerful role they demonstrate on the long run. In my own reading and writing experience, my sponsors of literacy were my childhood memories, my school, and the various resources I’ve used to accomplish an outstanding Multi-Genre Research Paper.
Professor Deborah Brandt’s research article “Sponsors of Literacy” is about the importance of the sponsors. According to her, sponsors are the ones that provide the sponsored the access to literacy. Brandt interviews about 100 people and through those interviews, Brandt makes three main points regarding sponsors. The first one is about how different kinds of sponsors can produce different kinds of performances. The example that Brandt shows to the readers is the difference in the background of Raymond Branch and Dora Lopez. Branch is able to be exposed to the more powerful sponsors, while Lopez cannot. The second main point in this article is that economic and political can cause a rise in literacy
Our view of literacy upon commencing this course, was that it is the ability to read and write. Our understanding of it however was partially true because, reading and writing are essential of any person’s literacy, but reading and
Literacy is defined as being literate, that is, being able to read and write in a language. My personal experience with literacy began at an early age, at the age of 4 when I began to sit and read words and letters in the back of my mother’s car. Soon enough, she would bring me a magazine called “Majed” which, in the 90’s, was a popular magazine. With this, I began even more interested in reading and writing and reviewed every word in the magazine associated with each of the short pictured stories. It was the first memory I deeply recall of literacy and it was what laid the foundation for my personal love of reading and writing. The methodology used for this is an interview. There are three interviews which are analyzed and brought together in the form of a narrative. This narrative serves to better explain the emotions and thoughts that the interviewees had about the idea of literacy.
Is it important to be a literate person in today’s society? The ability to function well depends on whether or not a person is literate and can comprehend what is going on around them. If a person doesn’t have the basic ability to read, they will feel the stress and dependency on others because of their illiteracy. Illiteracy is a big problem because without the knowledge of reading, illiterate people can’t perform daily tasks and responsibilities in daily life. When all it would take is a mere two minutes out of your day, don’t you think illiteracy can be helped or even extinguished?
Learning to read and write, or getting an education in general, is something that is easily handed to us in the world today. Imagine living in a world where you were expected to be uneducated, illiterate, and stupid. In the texts “The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me” by Sherman Alexie and “Learning to Read and Write” by Frederick Douglass, these young boys grew up in different worlds where they were looked down upon and were expected to fail due to the standards they grew accustomed to. Although Douglass and Alexie underwent contrasting hardships on their educational journey, they both shared the realization that learning to read and write was both a curse and a blessing. With those shared