The Foundation Early memories of reading and writing are very scarce for me, as they are with many people when it comes to our younger years. However, I do have one particularly vivid image of the start of my reading narrative. I have grown up the oldest of three girls, which meant quite a hectic household. Everyone needs their way of escaping, because at age four life is so chaotic, and reading at bedtime happened to be mine. I would prepare my bed and climb in, books in hand. I would wait patiently as my parents put my sisters to bed, and then it was time for the daily reading of The Foot Book. I found comfort in knowing my parents found time for each of us, independent of the other girls. Though I am not certain where that copy of The …show more content…
I sensed something was missing though. This thought came in my transition into junior year. We would practice our hand at various prompts in the classroom, and even reading more sophisticated literary works, but I still found that I lacked a common adult attribute. Public speaking. Just as Sherman Alexie admired his father for his love of reading, I can relate in that I admire my father for his articulate speaking style. I spoke to him about this lingering thought and we decided to tackle the challenge head on. He made sure to reiterate the importance of confidence and preparedness as we worked. As my involvement in clubs and groups grew, as did my likelihood of speech giving. Not to say that I lacked satisfactory speaking skills, but I did notice much of speaking occurred in front of peers and teachers; a comfortable setting in which I possessed endless poise. I pondered when and where I would ever have the opportunity to practice the skills I had been striving to sharpen. Well, the opportunity came knocking one September morning. I opened my email to find an invitation to a Southern Pines Rotary Club. This was no ordinary invitation though, I would be recognized at this meeting for representing the club at a leadership program that past summer and was asked to share some of my experience there. I couldn’t contain myself and I immediately shared the news with my father. As the emotions soon settled in, I anxiously awaited that Friday. I set out to work drafting what I would share, refering to my dad for pointers and
Anita Leinweber is an assistant professor of marine science at UH Hilo. She is originally from Germany, where she received her master of science and doctor of philosophy before becoming a postdoctoral fellow at UCLA. She, thankfully, had much to say for each of the questions, allowing me to learn a lot about writing and public speaking in my field. Her own experiences with public speaking mostly revolve around scientific conferences, where she would present her research to peers and many other scientists. She also taught a class at UCLA that she considered more public because it was open to interested individuals 55 and older. She also often spoke to K-12 teachers about her science and how they could use it in their own classroom. As for
The speech delivered by Dr. Randy Pausch is a powerful and influential public speaking, including various communication components that we should pay attention to and learn when we present our speeches. This lecture is divided into three parts: My childhood dreams, enabling the dreams of others and lessons learned. Dr. Randy Pausch told his audience what he believed and valued with his proper body languages, effective and efficient delivery and interesting and attractive visual aids. From this speech, it can be told that the speaker’s strengths and effectiveness from the lecture, which can reflect my problems as a communicator and a public speaker
Sherman Alexie's comic novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, follows Junior, a 14 year old Indian boy, who lives on a Spokane Indian Reservation with his two parents and his sister, Mary. Junior, a young cartoonist, was unfortunately born with many medical issues and is picked on by many people on the Rez, except his best friend Rowdy. At first, he seems to be this shy, little boy who would do anything to not be made fun of. The novel shows him getting beat, teased and tormented on his Reservation. Eventually, he takes a stand in his life and decides to better his education by enrolling in an all white school in Reardan. Despite being called a traitor by his own kind, Junior continues to live a double life, balancing both
In the chapter “Hope Against Hope”, Sherman Alexie uses Junior’s conversation with Mr. P to develop Junior’s reasons for leaving the rez to find a better life.
My early writing education is mostly lost to my conscious memory, but I do think that regular reading, from a young age, of books of all sorts loomed large in that education. I remember a prose piece from sixth-grade “honors” English And Reading class called “Mutants”. It was my response to an assignment to write “a book”; about thirty handwritten pages, it was made up of two separate stories about young people with super-powers. I was at the time a huge fan of a comic book (recently popularized on film) called “The X-Men”, about a group of people born with strange powers who fought for good even though they were feared and hated by the public.
As a preteen, my parents thought that reading as a good hobbit needed to be foster from my childhood. Therefore, I had a bedtime for stories since I was three years old. My parents would prepare different stories and read for me everyday. The books at that time always had more cartoons than characters, and my parents would teach me to recognize characters in the books. Then, I went to the elementary school at six years old, and I
As a child, I have always been fond of reading books. My mother would read to me every single night before I went to bed and sometimes throughout the day. It was the most exciting time of the day when she would open the cabinet, with what seemed to be hundreds of feet tall, of endless books to choose from. When she read to me, I wanted nothing more than to read just like her. Together, we worked on reading every chance we had. Eventually I got better at reading alone and could not put a book down. Instead of playing outside with my brothers during the Summer, I would stay inside in complete silence and just read. I remember going to the library with my mom on Saturdays, and staying the entire day. I looked forward to it each and every week.
After reviewing my speeches back to back, I realized that my public speaking skills have evolved dramatically. While I would like to have changes to my projects if I had the ability to time travel, but overall I am more than satisfied with my progression in public speaking. My level of listenability is still not flawless, but with some more practice and time I am confident that I could become a decent public speaker. Whether I will do anything as a public speaker is yet to be determined, but I do know that I walked into this class with the simple expectation to acquire my honor credits, but was fortunate enough to part with experience that will be applied to the rest of both my academic and occupational careers.
When I started first grade, I finally started to appreciate some of my mother’s work. At the beginning of the year, everyone had to take a reading level test, and I ranked the highest among my classmates. I flexed my reading skills before everyone. I volunteered to read during class. I read to my parents, to my grandparents, to my dog.
Staring at the front cover, I stick my tongue out and furrow my brow at the thought of reading a book in its entirety. This is how my mind worked as a small child. Reading was not my idea of fun nor was I even comprehending what I was looking at. My parents weren’t the best students, so I always felt like it was pointless to ask for help at home. However, I did learn to read and comprehend books after I had help from an inspirational teacher. She took extra time out of her evenings to teach a child that there is more than just the alphabet arranged across pages. In “How I Learned to Read and Write” by Frederick Douglass and “The Lonely, Good Company of Books” by Richard Rodriguez, they tell us their own stories about books and reading. Douglass
The time that I recall when I first began to read was when I was two years old. My mom started teaching me a lot before I went into kindergarten and it was really useful that she was a kindergarten teacher herself. The main types of readings I do are magazines, research articles, and when I get assigned to read a novel for a class. I would describe myself as a reader that once I start reading a book, I find myself not being able to stop because I want to know what will happen next. A moment that encapsulates who I am as a reader is when I read a novel that I chose for a class to do a book report on and found myself reading it for over an hour because I was in such suspense. My favorite books are “Let Me Call You Sweetheart” and “Dress Her in
My freshman year of high school, reading emerged into to my life by a magnificent individual, my cousin, Vanessa. She gave me my first set of books written by a well-known writer,
In public speaking I learned many types of concepts, theories and terms of communication. In concepts of publicly speaking there’s, relaxation, practice, credibility, attention getters, attire, organization, volume, emotion, audience relation, and movement. In my first speech, “The any old bag speech” I quickly learned the do’s, don’ts and concepts of my speech performance.
Nealy and my parents helped me tremendously over the years to overcome my fear. I stayed after school to practice in front of Mrs. Nealy and a small group of my closest friends. My parents recorded my speeches so that I could watch my body language and practice over and over again. My sister, although 3 years younger than I was, provided me with many funny but ingenious comments that help me to learn. I practiced in the shower, in front of the mirror, and everywhere else I could before each presentations. It wasn’t easy; however, as the years went by, I felt more confident and comfortable speaking in front of groups. I have learned the valuable techniques from Maya Angelou that said, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel”. With each of my speeches over the years, I have tried to incorporate some funny or heart warming stories to keep my audience engaging and always remembered Mrs. Nealy’s advice that I didn’t need to memorize every word from my speech, but just to prepare an outline, be interesting, and try to have
In order to successfully deliver an oral presentation such as a speech, the speaker must follow certain procedures to ensure his message can be conveyed clearly. Vast amounts of research are essential in order to acquire the knowledge necessary to be able to speak about a topic comfortably and answer any questions the audience might have during the course of the presentation. After acquiring such knowledge about the topic of the presentation the speaker will feel more confident, confidence is key in delivering speeches and other oral presentations because it makes the speaker look more credible and trustworthy. Lastly, the speaker must be fluid and eloquent with his words, the speaker must be able to sound clear and crisp while delivering their