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Analysis Of Deborah Brandt 's ' Sponsors Of Literacy Essay

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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

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