My Literacy Journey

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My personal literacy journey probably echoes most children who grew up in a nuclear American family. I grew up speaking and writing in English with little to no experience with learning other languages until sixth grade. I emphasize “learning” because I was exposed to other languages living in Guam from kindergarten through third grade. I learned to read and write in cursive and print, along with learning to type starting in fifth grade. I started speaking at the average age in English and continued to develop my vocabulary through the years. While my personal literacy environment and experience might be like most American English as a first language student, I do understand that it is not the same for every peer that I encountered or student …show more content…

Furthermore, I converse, write essays, and play language games, such as Wheel of Fortune, on my phone and other electronic devices. I will occasionally write letters or notes to family, friends, and students. I have observed coworkers and students engaging in oral conversations in other languages–Arabic, Spanish, German–as well. As detailed above, English played a major role in my literacy development, but starting in sixth grade, Spanish did start playing small roles in my literacy learning as well. My literacy in school increased with grade level and the school I attended. While I do not remember most of my first and second grade years, I do remember learning to read and write in cursive from a very young age. I think that the greatest impact on my literacy development was the requirement to learn, memorize, and reiterate (orally and in writing) verses of the Bible in the King James Version, Easy to Read Version, and New International Version during Bible classes and Awana in first through third grade. I, also, remember having a large learning gap between my third and fourth grade years due to having switched schools after moving from Guam to …show more content…

Elementary school is not the end. Middle school comes with its successes and challenges. I would say the greatest success of my middle school literacy experience was being able to read above grade level and being able to quickly pick up literacy in Spanish. The biggest challenge was becoming literate in standardized state testing due to having to overcome extreme anxiety. My literacy skills switched from being able to carry on basic conversations to being able to give oral presentations on things that I had read and typing up papers in MLA and APA formats. This new formal literacy continued into secondary school but quickly elevated. High school comes with its own new literacy experiences. In freshman and sophomore year, I attended a school that focused on biomedical and engineering sciences that required me to quickly become proficient in scientific literacy. This was, also, the first time I was exposed to being almost completely digitally literate, rather than focusing on textbooks. Furthermore, I started college courses in high school, so I had to effectively raise my literacy level from eighth grade to undergraduate level within a

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