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.…
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…
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.…
I was struggling in school because of the language. I only knew simple words and sentences. Education in my country was not that great compared to United States. We didn't had substitute when the teachers were absent the leader of the class was taking care of the class when the teacher was absent. The leader of the class was chosen based on their grades and how they did on finals. I was the leader in my class and I was always ahead of my grade because after school…
There are two main similarities between the creation myths and the literacy narratives, For example, they both mention race and ethnicity. In the literacy narratives they mention blacks, whites, and Jewish people. In the creation myths they mention several different colors for instance, red, and yellow, black and white. There are also many differences between the myths and the literacy narratives. The creation myths are fictional and discuss the dawn of time, and the literacy narratives are nonfiction and discuss human race, slavery, and learning how to read and write. There are also differences between the Fredrick Douglass literacy narrative and the Gerald Graff literacy narrative.…
As a child, it is fair to say that I was raised by my grandparents. My earliest recollections date back to about the age of four. My grandmother managed an in home daycare with about ten students and 5 who would come after elementary school. It was open till 5:30 p.m. so I became quite familiar with the other students enrolled. Being that I was among the youngest I enjoyed the benefits of having twice the education as the other students. I would learn phonetics with them in class, and once they were gone, my grandmother and I would have special “reading sessions”. An activity I would profit from for the rest of my life.…
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.…
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…
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.…
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…
“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.…
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 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.…
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…
"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.…