Reading the Silent Past: Student Practices in Family Story Writing

This study explores interpretive literacy—defined here as the capacity to construct coherent meaning from sources that are ambiguous, conflicting, and highly personal. While much research on comprehension utilizes formal texts, this study turns to a rich yet underexplored domain: family history—a "silent past" composed of faded memories, old photographs, and unspoken narratives. The research examines the specific practices university students employ to navigate this complex information environment when writing their own family stories, exploring not only their cognitive evaluation of evidence but also the emotional and sociocultural negotiations inherent in this personal process of meaning-making.

This paper reports on the preliminary findings of an empirical study, a qualitative case study of "My Family Story (Nonfiction Writing)," an undergraduate General Education course at a Hong Kong university. The study draws on data collected from a cohort of approximately 40 students during the September 2024 semester. The course’s pedagogical design provided a systematic framework for the study's data collection, enabling the triangulation of three distinct data sources: students' process documents, which captured their struggles in preparing for and conducting dialogues with family members; their final nonfiction stories, revealing how they wrestled with the dual demands of factual accuracy and creative engagement; and the dynamic peer interactions, in which a feedback loop provided crucial reference points and motivation.

Preliminary analysis of these data reveals several key practices. The study observed students engaging in Narrative Weaving, moving beyond mere reporting to actively compose coherent family stories, applying a form of narrative synthesis to fill informational gaps. It also identified a process of Affective Evaluation, where the credibility of a source was determined not only by its factual plausibility but also by its emotional resonance. Finally, students demonstrated sophisticated practices of Multimodal Triangulation, navigating the synergy and tension between different semiotic modes, such as using visual cues in a photograph to corroborate an oral account or engaging in critical interpretation when a letter's content conflicted with a private memory.

The study concludes that when faced with the profound subjects of family history and personal life, students' comprehension extends beyond the framework of traditional text reading. They are not merely seeking facts but are actively constructing a narrative that can both respond to experience and ground the self. It is argued that the value of pedagogical practices like family story writing lies in providing a unique arena for learners to rehearse an integrative "interpretive literacy." For the fields of general education and writing pedagogy, this study offers a pedagogical model for cultivating complex literacy in an uncertain world.

Drawing on a qualitative analysis of an undergraduate GE course, this research examines how students interpret ambiguous personal sources by writing family stories. Through practices like narrative weaving, affective evaluation, and multimodal triangulation, they actively build accounts that respond to experience and ground the self. The demonstrated "interpretive literacy" extends beyond the framework of traditional text reading.