My Literacy Experience
Everyone’s first experience with literature goes all the way back to elementary school. In order to do anything successfully, a person must first master the basics. Reading and writing require that you first learn the alphabet, how to pronounce letters, and how to put those letters together to form words. As a child I struggled with these basics, and so that discouraged me to the point of where I did not even want to try. If it was not for my grandmother, parents, and the realization that not being able to read will lead to failure, I would not enjoy literature as much as I do today.
When I think about my very first experience with literature, the first person that comes to mind is my father. He taught me the value of repetition.
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I recall literally hating second grade only because my teacher would require each student to read a book in front of the class every Friday. At that time I could only read kindergarten words, so having to read in front of my classmates embarrassed me very much. Throughout that whole school year I failed every spelling test. When it came close to the end of the school year I took a pretest reading, on which I did not even try to pass. A few days after that I remember sitting in an office with my mother and teacher. She was explaining to my mom that if I did not pass the last reading test, I would fail second grade and they would consider putting me in EC. Hearing the words “fail” and “EC” in one sentence scared me. I did not want my friends to leave me behind and I surly did not want to be classified as an “EC” student. Being an “EC” student automatically made you “uncool”. That was the moment I decided I would actually try to learn my spelling words. After that day in the office, I remember writing my spelling words over and over every night. When I took the last reading test I passed, which of course made me extremely
I have very few recollections of my early years and the exact age I was able to read and write. Some of my earliest memories are vague on the topic of my literacy. However, I do remember small memories, such as, learning how to write my name in cursive, winning prizes for reading, and crying over every assigned high school essay. Over the last twelve years my literacy grew rapidly with the help of teachers, large school libraries, my family, and so on. There is always room for my literacy skills to grow, but my family’s help and positive attitude towards my education, the school systems I have been a part of, and the horrible required essays from high school helped obtain the level, skills, habits, and processes that I use as part of my literacy
“Literacy is a bridge from misery to hope. It is a tool for daily life in modern society. It is a bulwark against poverty, and a building block of development, an essential complement to investments in roads, dams, clinics and factories. Literacy is a platform for democratization, and a vehicle for the promotion of cultural and national identity. Especially for girls and women, it is an agent of family health and nutrition. For everyone, everywhere, literacy is, along with education in general, a basic human right.... Literacy is, finally, the road to human progress and the means through which every man,
It was finally time to head to gym class in the afternoon where we were instructed to take part of a physical test. This test would determine how fit or unfit we are based on a system that was implemented by those with greater authority, on which concluded that it was on such a scale society should be based on. So it was that afternoon that I preformed the tasks that were instructed on to me and my peers. I was able to completed them to my utmost potential which can be consider to be something not so distinctive. It was on this day that I was mocked by one my peers of my lack of ability to preform the instructed physical tasks, that was a no brainer to such a fit individual like himself. It
Life is like a tree, it grows and develops branches and leaves that come and go as we progress. The environments we live in determine which branches wither and fade and which prosper. Every branch holds some form of learned literacy from the end of the roots to the trunk and highest branch. Literacy encompasses many aspects of life.
The story of my history as a writer is a very long one. My writing has come full circle. I have changed very much throughout the years, both as I grew older and as I discovered more aspects of my own personality. The growth that I see when I look back is incredible, and it all seems to revolve around my emotions. I have always been a very emotional girl who feels things keenly. All of my truly memorable writing, looking back, has come from experiences that struck a chord with my developing self. This assignment has opened my eyes, despite my initial difficulty in writing it. When I was asked to write down my earliest memory of writing, at first I drew a blank. All of a sudden, it became very clear to me, probably because it had some childhood trauma associated with it.
My literacy journey began long before I had actually learned how to read or write. While recently going through baby pictures with my mother, we came across a photo of my father and I book shopping on the Logos boat, a boat that would come to my island every year that was filled with books for our purchasing. Upon looking at this picture, my mother was quite nostalgic and explained how they began my journey to literacy through experiences like this. My earliest memory of experiencing literature was as a small child. My parents would read bedtime stories to me each night before I went to bed. I vividly remember us sitting on the bed together with this big book of “365 bedtime stories for 365 days” and we read one story each day until we had
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.
Throughout my childhood I was never very good at reading. It was something I always struggled with and I grew to not like reading because of this. As a child my mom and dad would read books to me before I went to bed and I always enjoyed looking at the pictures and listening. Then, as I got older my mom would have me begin to read with her out loud. I did not like this because I was not a good reader and I would get so frustrated. During this time I would struggle greatly with reading the pages fluently, I also would mix up some of the letters at times. I also struggled with comprehension, as I got older. My mom would make me read the Junie B. Jones books by myself and then I would have to tell her what happened. Most
Growing up in working class family, my mom worked all the time for the living of a big family with five kids, and my dad was in re-education camp because of his association with U.S. government before 1975. My grandma was my primary guardian. “Go to study, go to read your books, read anything you like to read if you want to have a better life,” my grandma kept bouncing that phrase in my childhood. It becomes the sole rule for me to have better future. I become curious and wonder what the inside of reading and write can make my life difference. In my old days, there was no computer, no laptop, no phone…etc, to play or to spend time with, other than books. I had no other choice than read, and read and tended to dig deep in science books, math books, and chemistry books. I tended to interest in how the problem was solved. I even used my saving money to buy my own math books to read more problems and how to solve the problem. I remembered that I ended up reading the same math book as my seventh grade teacher. She used to throw the challenge questions on every quiz to pick out the brighter student. There was few students know how to solve those challenge questions. I was the one who fortunately nailed it every single time. My passion and my logic for reading and writing came to me through that experience, and also through my grandma and my mom who plant the seed in me, who want their kids to have happy and better life than they were. In my own dictionary, literacy is not just the ability to read and write, it is a strong foundation to build up the knowledge to have better life, to become who I am today.
My relationship with literacy began when I started elementary school and that was the first starting point of my positive relationship with literacy. I really started to grow as a reader and writer throughout my middle school and high school years. Throughout my years of going to school I had many positive experiences that shaped my view of literacy today. My literacy skills have also enhanced throughout my educational years.
According to Dostal and Hanley (2009), emergent literacy is a slow and continual process that occurs from birth until a child can read and write in the ‘traditional’ sense. It incorporates all parts of language, such as viewing, listening, speaking, reading and writing. Emergent literacy skills and understanding can be facilitated in kindergarten and pre-primary through carefully organised routines, transitions, and learning centres, such as the science centre, writing centre, and socio-dramatic play centre. Emergent literacy can also be developed through the use of teaching strategies such as a language experience and shared reading.
The world around us is constantly changing and technology has a lot of impact on the rapid changes. This is one of the reasons why it is hard to give a specific definition of the word literacy. Literacy can be broken down into two main subcategories: literate and illiterate. One of the main discussions with this is what qualifications or qualities separate someone who is literate from someone who is illiterate. Historians have been researching literacy for the past five decades and have been trying to come up with a fixed definition of the word. To me, literacy is a very complex word as the definition has evolved over time, but in the end it is how one excels in their discourse(s), which have changed throughout the years and helped create their
There are many different types of events that shape who we are as writers and how we view literacy. Reading and writing is viewed as a chore among a number of people because of bad experiences they had when they were first starting to read and write. In my experience reading and writing has always been something to rejoice, not renounce, and that is because I have had positive memories about them.
Reading has been a part of my life from the second I was born. All throughout my childhood, my parents read to me, and I loved it. I grew up going to the library and being read to constantly. Especially in the years before Kindergarten, reading was my favorite thing to do. I grew up loving fairy tales and thriving on the knowledge that I could have any book I wanted, to be read to me that night. Having no siblings, my only examples were my parents, and they read constantly. Without a family that supported my love of reading throughout my childhood, I wouldn’t appreciate it nearly as much as I have and do now.
The ability to write well is not a naturally acquired skill; it is usually learned or culturally transmitted as a set of practices in formal instructional settings or other environments. Writing skills must be practiced and learned through experience. Writing also involves composing, which implies the ability either to tell or retell pieces of information in the form of narratives or description, or to transform information into new texts, as in expository or argumentative writing. Perhaps it is best viewed as a continuum of activities that range from the more mechanical or formal aspects of “writing down” on the one end, to the more complex act of composing on the other end (Omaggio Hadley, 1993). It is undoubtedly the act of