Brandt Oct 1

Before You Read.

It is easy to see and know that the U.S. culture encourages students to read in many ways. For one, something that I see a lot of about making reading better/encouraging is seeing something having to do with it on billboards. Television also has a lot of commercials and shows about reading. In everyday life, reading is very important and it is needed to survive in our culture today. Being a good reader/writer is personal I believe. It depends on the person themselves.

Summary.

In Brandt's article, "Sponsors of Literacy", she argues that sponsorship in writing is extremely important in our society. She thinks that as a nation, we need to push for higher/better literacy and writing. She also talks about history and it's development and also talks about the positives and negatives of women and their sponsorship.

Synthesis.

I think one person that can be related to Brandt's article is Porter. Porter's "Intertextuality and the Discourse Community" can be related to this because both of these discuss the importance of understanding the audience and what is appropriate to write to them. A second person that can be related to this is

Response	Quotation
To me, this is saying that every person has their own way of writing and it can be shown because of the writer's past experiences. People also learn how to become better writers over time. Practice makes perfect.	“The field of writing studies has had much to say about individual literacy development” (333).
This is saying that people are writing more about what is going on in our world/economy. They also focus of education, employment, civil rights and status. What happens in our world gives people something to write about.	“As ordinary citizens have been compelled into these economies, their reading and writing skills have grown sharply more central to the everyday trade of information and goods as well as to the pursuit of education, employment, civil rights, status” (333).
At the same time though, writers have become vulnerable to writing about everything in our world and about our economy. Is it good or bad? I am not sure. It depends on the person reading.	“At the same time, people's literate skills have grown vulnerable to unprecedented turbulence in their economic value, as conditions, forms, and standards of literacy achievement seems to shift with almost every new generation of learners” (333).
Sponsors are people that can help with whatever is needed. They will be there for guidance and can help with many things.	“In whatever form, sponsors deliver the ideological freight that must be borne for access to what they have” (335).
Again, sponsors make things a lot easier. They help explain a range of juman relationships and can be seen through a lot of different things.	“The concept of sponsors helps to explain, then, a range of human relationships and the ideological pressures that turn up at the scenes of literacy learning-- from benign sharing between adults and youths, to euphemized coercions in schools and workplaces, to the most notorious impositions and deprivations by church or state” (335).

MM.

Brandt's article basically discussed the understanding of the concepts of multiple or single literacies, strengthening reading abilities and what exactly that has shaped us as a writer.

Thoughts.

I thought this article was alright. Personally, it wasn't something that I would read again but it made me think. In my everyday life I can see how this can relate to it.