Essay 1 Literacy Narrative Overview of the Assignment In this first essay, you will be writing a what is known as a Literacy Narrative. You can approach this assignment in numerous ways, provided that you examine a specific moment in your own development as a reader and/or writer the only catch being that this has to be an experience you can revisit in some way (i.e., a book you can re-read, or an essay, story, poem, etc. that you wrote that you can still find a copy of to read). You could explore the issue from any number of perspectives the first time you read a book that you really enjoyed or the first time you felt good about something you wrote, or, on the other hand, the point when you realized you hated reading or when you became discouraged about writing (or when you decided you werent interested enough to try). The overall goal of the essay in other words, the thesis that youll be illustrating throughout is to communicate why this experience impacted you in the way it did and how you view it now, long after it happened. Has your view, or memory, of the situation changed Why or why not How does the experience still affect you as a reader or writer Note that this is not just a personal story dont just write about what happened, but about how you think it affects you and/or whether you think your memory of the situation is still accurate. Regardless of which approach you take, your essay should satisfy the basic requirements of the assignment, as described below. Evaluation The essay contains a sophisticated level of reflection upon the experience and its impact on your personal literacy. There is a clear thesis/direction for the essay that is apparent by the end of the introduction, and which is developed in the subsequent portions of the essay. Discussion and description are precise and relatable the essay speaks in concrete terms about concrete events, rather than vaguely or about abstract ideas that the reader may or may not be able to…
Literacy Memoir My mom told me that when I was a kid, I was very interested in learning different kinds of language. When I was living in China, I loved to learn English. Whenever I watch foreign TV shows, I imitate the way how they talk. English used to be my favorite subject in school, until I immigrated to America.…
My early literacy experience was not a big of a deal for me at an early age. When I was in school I always took a reading and writing course with a grain of salt, it was just one more class on my schedule. Literature did not really appeal to me in my early experience. I always think that why do I need to take a literature course in order for me to succeed in the future.…
I am not a professional reader, nor am I a professional writer. As a matter of fact, I don’t like writing at all, but then writing is a part of life. I was only 6 years old when I started to take an interest in reading and also started to learn how to read. My grandmother was a greater reader. She would read to me all the time and encourage me to read anything I could get my hands on. I would always see her with a book during her spare time.…
It’s a bler, trying to look back on when I was a preschooler, so first grade was a mess. First grade is a life changer. Going to Tri-Point in Piper City not even for a full year. Tri-Point is a small old school just like ROWVA. I remember changing schools because my parents got a divorce. We moved to Peoria and lived there with my mom's parents. I got transferred to a Catholic school. Every Wednesday the whole place went to church right across the street. It was the worst thing ever sitting in the old creepy church listening the Father talk about only “God” knows what. My teacher's name was Mrs. Heartstick, no I did not make the name up. She grossed me out. He hands very dry and cracked, they looked like an old man's hands who had worked his whole…
I was an unruly child in my elementary and middle school years. I often had trouble conforming and being apart of the class. The reason for this was because learning new concepts were extremely hard when you couldn’t understand the words being used. I had not learnt to read till the second grade and had a terrible lisp which caused me to fumble with my words almost all of the time. My education was being squandered all because I couldn’t understand. By the time I entered middle school, I was in trouble; I either had to try harder or risk being held back, and one teacher took it upon herself to try and change my fate.…
When asked to write about a childhood experience most people think of the time they lost their first tooth when they were 6, or about the time they started school when they were 5, however, I’m going to write about summer. It wasn’t just any summer it was the summer that I went to the lake with my Dad and Papa. I was about 4 and couldn’t be any more excited about what was going to happen…
“This is the day,” I said to myself mentally as I looked upon a computer screen. “I’m going to need to know sooner or later,” as I hovered the mouse over the ‘Final Grades’ tab before quickly Putting over the exit button. It had been two weeks since the grades had been posted for my spring classes, and I could not gather my nerves to look them up online. I knew that I had done well enough throughout the semester, but I was afraid of unknowingly bombing the final test. Deciding that I was being ridiculous after another week had passed, I gathered my nerves, and clicked the link that said “Final Grades” on my computer screen. I stared intensely at the page when my mind begins to discern the letter grades to be…A, B, A, A, A. I breathed a sigh of relief as I felt an enormous pressure lift of my chest, a vast difference to the last time I was in a similar situation.…
Growing up in a bilingual household has affected my literacy journey. It affected my Spanish writing because I focused more on English. This course has helped me look at English literacy beyond the point of it being another credit to simply cross off my list. A specific reading from this course that I was able to really retain and relate to was Victor Villanueva's excerpt from Bootstraps: From an Academic of Color. Here he brought up several points that made me think differently about literacy and how it can affect my life now or even after college. “One professor said my writing was too formulaic. One professor said it was to novel. Another wrote: ‘nonsense.’ “ (Villanueva 112) I really like this quote because relating it back to literacy and my college experience ahead of me, it makes me understand that there will be times…
Literacy Narrative; Too Much to Say The problem that plagues the modern mind is a surplus of content. Increasingly in my generation, with the trend to binge on internet freedom, the average person has seen too much to be able to form a clear opinion. With an ever-changing fleet of perspectives invading one’s mind, it is as if one is screaming in a riot to try and convince themselves of their own opinion. The most influential instructor I’ve been lead by, a burly yeti of an English teacher/ wrestling coach; Aaron Cantrell, told me clearly one day that I ‘just had too much to say’. That was it; Eureka! He had struck the chord loudly enough for me to hear that it was made up of individual strings. When I looked down at the prompt he had thrown around the room, this leaflet that seemed daunting and futile, I saw that buried in the complex of Times New Roman, there was really only one question. There was one solitary string that needed to be voiced at a time to complete the chord the prompt requested. I only needed to have one idea at a time. Line by line, one string after another, I plucked each sentence out, and in the disarray of jumbled context and my grammatical errors; I heard a resemblance of harmony. With small adjustments in placement and a tune-up of fanciful synonyms, I began to hear the chord I wanted. ‘It takes bravery’ The Yeti-man proclaimed. ‘It takes courage to have an opinion and stick with it long enough to fully understand it yourself’. In a fit of fantastic allusions, to which I can show no decency to try and recreate, he said, ‘the secret is to believe what you say’. Now in a swirling mind, filled with today’s troubles, tomorrow’s worries, yesterday’s regret and consequential foresight, it’s hard to know who you really are. That’s the rub though, the practice; to alleviate the overwhelming amount of information that you’ve borne witness to, by taking a prompt one idea at a time. It’s all about figuring…
Before tenth grade, school had come easily to me. I could excel in my classes without having to work hard or often even study outside of class. This changes when I began taking AP Biology with a group of seniors. Having no biology base prior to this class, I was stretched. I had to learn how to study and discover how I learned best. Through much struggle I was able to grow as a student and as a human being. I learned what working hard in school meant and began to see that having good grades and high personal merit was of great personal value to me. That is not to say that this class was without its struggles. There were many moments were I learned something new, sometimes the hard way, but growth was always present. The skills that I cultivated through this course…
When I enrolled in intermediate school I attended my first real English lesson with language books and homework assignments. I was an active participant during the English lesson; I recall a lesson in which I was the only student who was familiar…
I am an unlikely English teacher. In kindergarten, I was diagnosed with Visual Dyslexia and Hyperactivity Disorder (now called ADHD). I grew up in poverty, and my only means to a Bachelor’s degree was a federal Pell Grant. Learning has been a lifelong passion of mine, thanks to the adult influences in my life, but my path has been a rocky one. I needed special intervention in school. I was unorganized, struggled with graphic learning (maps, math, Social Studies), and worked extra hours to attain the skills I needed to survive in school. None of the influential adults in my life attended college, but a set of encyclopedias taught me that they valued education tremendously. My mother used these encyclopedias as a child, so when we moved, my…
My first reading assignment in English class was The Tale of Two Cities; which was even hard for classmates to understand. I read and read and read the book. To understand one page, sometimes I spent hour. After school, the rest of my day was devoted to homework. I had a hard time and sometimes I wanted to go back to Korea. However, everyone in my school was kind and understanding, so most of the time they were patient with me until I finished my sentences and they answered my questions until I totally understood. When I had questions on homework, I visited subject teachers more than three times a day, but they were never annoyed by me. Even if I only studied in private school the first semester of sophomore year, until I transferred to public school, I could learn how to deal with people and overcome school obstacles, and was encouraged to conquer my second thoughts.…
"You cannot open a book without learning something" (Confucius). About two months before school started, the weather became extremely hot. I stayed at home to enjoy the air-conditioning and to do some reading. I grabbed an arbitrary book which had probably sat on my shelf during the whole summer. On the cover, it read "Voices and Values: A Reader for Writers by Janet M.Goldstein and Beth Johnson". On the inside, a few carelessly folded pages indicated that the book had ever been used. This book, a collection of effective essays, was a requirement for one of my classes. It theoretically served as a key to succeed both in reading and writing, but I had only read ten essays in an attempt to finish my homework assignments enough to maintain a fair grade in the course. That was how I approached school, getting the highest possible grade with the lowest possible effort. However, after reading several more essays in "Voices and Values", my attitude toward studying changed.…