B- Raymond had many literacy sponsors. The first and most obvious being his father. His dad was a professor, so Raymond had access to all of the university’s resources. His second sponsor would be the Christmas gift he received, a personal computer, and a modem. The third sponsor would be his community. Raymond was located in an information-rich, resource-rich community that helped him acquire a powerful type of literacy.
C-Raymond’s Dad was a science professor and received a personal computer and modem when he was twelve years old. This opened up doors for him as he was able to access laboratories, new technologies, and most educated personnel. This created his love for computer programming techniques with real users. During the summers of his teenage years, he would wander around computer shops to expand new techniques. So his experiences with these various literacy sponsors helped him gain important skills very early in life.
D-As Raymond was already into programming, his parents bought him a computer for Christmas (pg.250). As he was given his computer I'm sure he became more detailed in programming which helped develop a passion for him. Being fond of computers drew him into making connections with high-tech developers, which could have been a big influence on why he is a successful freelance writer of software and software documentation (pg250).
E-One of the thresholds I see correlating with my sponsor's life is identity-laden. Raymond's life was shaped by the literacy sponsors he had around him, like his parents, his school, and his community(pg. 250). This shaped him into becoming interested in the technological field, as he was brought up with educated parents they provided him with a computer as a child which grew his interest in programming. The experiences he had in his community played a role as computer hardware and software stores started popping up, which during the summers he would roam these stores sampling new games and making connections with high-end developers. These literacy-sponsored things impacted and shifted his interest and helped him gain an advantage that most kids would have that weren't brought up the same way.
G-As college students, our education has many literacy sponsors. The most important being our professors, and our college’s resources. We also have technology such as computers and textbooks. As well as our parents (if they pay for college or at least help out). These literacy sponsors shaped our education to be more technological. As we are learning mostly online, we are gaining a variety of skills on the computer such as Google docs, and Microsoft office.

Carol White was heavily influenced by the vice president of her firm. She talks about how helping him out with his side job inspired her to go on her own journey. In the text, it is mentioned that she used to type letters and magazine articles for him, and even proofread. She also participated in a Persuasive Communication seminar which further helped her with evangelical work as a Jehovah’s Witnesses. Her desire to take this class came from a place of self-improvement. 

Firstly, Carol White was able to develop various rhetorical strategies by spending time with the vice president. Helping him out on his work was helpful to her as well because their interaction helped her learn skills she was interested in. Those learnings played an important role in her career as a missionary. Likewise, the seminar also gave her the skills that would facilitate her journey as a missionary since persuasive skills are helpful to get people to listen.

White was able to value the power of human anecdotes through the help of her sponsor. While observing him, she realized how powerful they can be and was thoroughly impressed. Human anecdotes are important because they make it easier and more interesting to prove our point. They are also fun to read and often cause us to empathize more with other humans, which can also make the writing more persuasive.

The threshold concept that can be seen in the writer’s life is community-oriented. Carol White would not have been able to accomplish her work if she were isolated. She took help from those around her to develop her skills and gain knowledge. “She discussed how typing letters and magazine articles and occasionally proofreading for this man taught her rhetorical strategies in which she was keenly interested (Brandt, p. 260.)”. She then also used the skills she acquired to do evangelical work in her community. “She now uses colorful anecdotes to prepare demonstrations that she performs with other women at weekly service meetings at their Kingdom Hall (Brandt, p. 260.)”

In the article, Brandt talks about how often sponsors influence the learning process because they hold a certain level of power above others. This idea holds true in our life as well, because we have very little control over the course material that gets taught. We can choose our classes but the content itself is beyond our control. Similarly, the idea that the person’s economic condition has a drastic effect on their path to literacy and the kind of sponsors they get also holds true. Some people can afford to spend a long time on their studies, and papers while others cannot because they have to juggle multiple jobs, or have other equally important responsibilities. In the article, he also mentions that literacy sponsors are not always empowering but can disempower or prevent literacies.

As an adult he started off working as working at a factory like his father. However, he was offered a fulltime job as a field staffer in the union, because he was charismatic and a good public speaker. He would work almost double the standard week. He would use other peoples works for inspiration when he was on the job for recruitment and other people skills (p. 255). 

Dwayne had several literary sponsors in life. His fathers rampant playing of leftist and pro-union advertising (p. 257). He would find newspapers and he read in breakroom to work on his reading. He received a paid union sponsors grant that let him take off 4 months to go to Washington, DC for training (p.255). He felt that at the training he was unprepared he had a “crash course” on negation, laws, contractional formation, GDP and how it effects pricing. At the end he felt unprepared, he liked the subject and felt it was interesting. He took classes at a nearby university. He kept a literary file drawer to borrow from peoples notes. His wife was also teaching him basic word processing at home. (p. 255) Dwayne’s early life literary sponsors early in lead him to work in a similar profession that his father did. While the sponsors later in life we’re his efforts to stay relevant and a catch-up mechanic. 

Lowrey’s story really represents a changing in times. When he started out as a union man you had to be likeable, and a lot of the skills could be learned on the job. As Lowrey got older the skills required more learning and actual knowledge which he was learning too slowly. This led to Lowrey eventually being replaced by a younger person with a master’s degree who had the required knowledge already set as a foundation. Another way to look at it is culturally times were changing in the 90s computers and college degrees were really being pushed. This push led to a lot of older people with experience but no degrees or physical credentials to be replaced in the workforce or “pushed” into retirement early (p. 256). 
Writing is impacted by past experiences and identity. Writing is a process in the sense that it is building onto former knowledge. Past experiences, like Dwayne Lowery’s past experiences working in the factory, have added value to the current circumstances. That is to say his past experiences working in the plant have given him a base of knowledge to know what to do for his job. The Master's degree worker who replaced him has a base of knowledge from his/her schooling and they build on it with working since they learn how things are done in practice, rather than contract law straight from the written law as they learned it. 
We can tie how a college degree surmounts any number of years of experience into our own lives as college students. As college students, we can decide to continue our education instead of working for experience. While we should know how to put our knowledge into practice, we also need to understand the knowledge we are being taught. Dwayne Lowery could not understand the contracts that were being used in his job, so he was replaced by someone who understood contract law very well. Dwayne Lowery tried to learn contract law in a crash course class at the university, but he was unable to pick up the skills he needed to learn and was therefore unable to do well in his previous job at the Union. In the end, a college degree is worth more than experience and public speaking skills that Lowery had experience in. 

Dora Lopez, a female Mexican American, was born in 1969, in a Texas border town with a Mexican American population of barely 1%. A working family, low-middle class. Her mother worked in a bookstore and her father pursued a degree in technical college, later was employed by the college. Dora used to work as a Teachers’ Assistant in a federally funded summer school program for the children of migrant workers. Dora attended a University, she later transferred to a technical college as she worked in a cleaning company, she also performed extra duties as a translator.

“Dora Lopez was being sponsored by what her parents could pull from the peripheral service systems of the university (the mail room, the bookstore, the second-hand technology market).” (Brandt, p. 251.) When Dora was younger she decided to learn how to read and write in Spanish by reading Spanish books from the bookstore her mother worked at and by writing letters to her relatives in Colombia. Being bilingual, Dora became a translator for the cleaning company she worked for, since most of the staff was Latin American. Because of her bilingual skills, Dora was able to develop her career which led her to become a higher earner in her line of work. 

Dora’s outcome was shaped by her economic status and ethnic background, her desire to communicate and connect with her own culture led her to engage in Spanish which later on became an integral part of her line of work. Her parents’ minority background also helped in shaping her overall cultural identity.

Dora and her family had to work hard to get the opportunities that others in a higher socioeconomic status might have readily available. From grocery shopping to finding newspapers in her own language, her family had to travel for miles in order to receive that information. When it came to writing utensils (the word processing unit), it was an outside source from a second hand seller that her father purchased for her.

E. Writing Concept:

Dora Lopez used the Context-Dependent threshold concept when it came to writing letters for her family, but also when she needed to write in English and Spanish in order to communicate with her staff in the cleaning company. Her skills as a bilingual speaker allowed her to be of used in her career. When Dora needed to communicate with Spanish speakers she probably used another threshold concept, Identity-Laden, as a member of the Mexican-American community, Dora was well equipped to relate to other Hispanics not just Mexican-American but all over the Latino community, since it is likely that her coworkers were from different parts of the Americas.

Brandt’s ideas of literary sponsors implies that we, as college students, have gained literary sponsors in our time studying at NOVA, but the reasons why we are here now also implies we have had sponsors in the past that got us where we are today. Although we share the same class, our circumstances might be completely different, and so our sponsors are different. The fact that we are writing this paper together shows that literary sponsors work, at what level they have interacted with us or helped vs discourage our writing is up to the individual to define, but the fact still remains we have gained literacy because of it. And as we continue to grow and educate ourselves through college classes, our sponsors might change or we might gain new ones.