Alisha Patel

Robert Arnold
UWRT 1101-051
23 September 2014
Compare/Contrast: Literacy Narrative Text vs. Altered Book
The uses of different rhetorical tools require different strategies of implementation
to successfully communicate to an audience both in text and visuals. Details in my
literacy narrative and in my altered book on how I became literate in nursing include
rhetorical tools such as evidence and climax. Although these were both seen in two
different forms, written text and visual elements, these tools of communication include
advantages and drawbacks.
In my literacy narrative text and visual, rhetorical devices such as evidence and
climax was used in order to convey the audience in what I became literate in. Although it
can be seen by each genre, it was more preferable to communicate my literacy narrative
through the visual. The rhetorical device, evidence was vaguely noticeable throughout the
book rather than specifically being written in text form. One of the pages where it was
noticeable that I became literate in nursing was very prominent as they were several
techniques used in order to show exactly just that. One of the techniques that were
included in the visual was choice of color. This helped in emphasizing what was
significant, leaving all the minor details the text included, out. Another technique that
was illustrated was chunking the items presented on the page in order for the audience to
grasp what was being communicated in a short and precise manner. These creative
techniques that were presented visually cannot be shown through the text. Although the

visual elements and the written text state the same thing, the manner in which they are
presented differed dramatically.
As the advantages can be seen through the visual elements, some of the
drawbacks can also be seen in the visual of the literacy narrative. This specific genre was
considered more difficult to produce in trying to construct and communicate the meaning
behind becoming literate in nursing by the use of one of the rhetorical devices, climax.
The written text of this narrative excels in proving to the audience that the narrator
struggled in order to become literate in one specific field. The texts incorporate dialogue
in order to elaborate on the evidence that builds the climax for the narrative. The dialogue
includes struggles, weak stages of the narrator, and also improvement of the narrator that
helps to create the climax. Not being able to succeed in nursing was the overall climax of
the text and cant be depicted thoroughly by visual elements. The details that are
provided in the text cant be seen with the emphasis the text provides on the pages of the
visual elements. Some of these details are the following: internal monologue, emotions,
feelings, thoughts, and ideas that contribute and help illuminate the climax in our minds
by reading the text. As the pictures show us what I cant do, the text explains why I cant
do it and for what reasons I am not able to achieve such tasks.
Through both these tools of communication, the way the meaning is
communicated can be advantageous and disadvantageous towards the work as a whole.
By using rhetorical tools, it helped allow creating a literacy narrative in written and visual
form. In order to make an even more effective multi-modal literacy narrative, I would
recommend incorporating more rhetorical devices that can be shown through both

versions of the literacy narrative. These different strategies of implementation help

successfully communicate to the audience how I became literate in nursing.