Personal Narrative: My Role As A Writer

In my time as a reader/writer I’ve developed a broad knowledge of literacy. What made me, the reader/wrtier that I am today goes back to the second grade. In the second grade we did A.R. reading, we set goals every week and read books that were only at our reading level. Then we went to the library to type words. Throughout most of the second grade I didn’t really try with reading or writing, but it really started in the third grade when my teacher made me read and write everyday. She made me reach a goal every day, and eventually it got to a point where I was one of the best readers and a good writer. I had to summarize each story we read in class and then write my opinion on the story and what I learned from reading it.
I never really started

to enjoy reading books until the fourth grade, in the fourth grade I started to read more and more books out of school because I never had anything to do. Once I started reading more it inspired me to write about books and other things I read, I would basically just summarize books and, write about how it related to me. When I read outside of school I had goals everyday depending on the book I’d try and read a certain amount of chapters in a night or if possible a book a week.

The person who influenced my reading and writing the most was my fifth grade teacher and her assistant.

They changed my entire attitude towards learning. The assistant is the one who really made me a better writer, she made me put more detail into my stories, and she even made me like it more than ever had. My actual teacher helped me become a better reader, she sat me down and helped me pick out book series once she learned the type of books I liked to

read.

Throughout my history as a reader/ writer there’s been successful things and, unsucessful things. In the second grade we wrote a short story mine was the worst in the class. Everyone else’s, the teacher let everyone present there’s but not mine. In the fifth grade I had a story about two professional boxers and, The boxer who won got a medal, the one who lost got money. I tried to explain to my teachers it wasn’t about the material possessions and that no matter how much money he had he couldn’t buy that title. They didn’t understand so the made me redo it.
My strength as a writer is giving a strong opinion but, also giving two sides to a statement or whatever I’m writing about.

When I write stories I go write with depth and, good amounts of detail but not too much to where the reader thinks it’s too much. My weakness as a writer is being repetitive and, coming up with new parts of a story or another point of view on a subject.

The only thing that confuses me as a writer is why teachers won’t let students choose what they write about. Like why not ask the students what they’d like to write about and not force them to write about subjects that don’t interest them. Doesn’t creativity allow an individual to expand more rather than writing about a subject that doesn’t stimulate their brain and, just putting enough effort into a paper for it to be

acceptable.

In the 10th grade we started writing more essays than I ever had in my time in school. We read books and wrote summaries called book chats. It was easy because I’ve been doing it my whole life. The essays we wrote about was what made me better at writing papers. For the most part we chose what we wrote about and, each subject captured my attention and, made me want to do good on each one. Each one we wrote about had meaning to me, they were about my life and, that made me feel like my teacher wanted to know more about us, which made me want to write more and, more. With that, I became better at writing than I ever had before. We read autobiographies and, wrote about how their life experience changed how we looked at life. We wrote an essay about the kindest person we knew. That was the essay that had the most meaning to me, because during that time I was dealing with problems. That made me want to be better and, it made me a better writer. When I write about things I find irrelevent I don’t do as good as when I write about something that interests me.

I think another thing that made me a better reader and writer was my dad spending time asking how much I was reading and, making sure I was reading and doing things like that. Having people involved in my writing was the main thing that kept me inspired to keep on writing and trying to better my skills as a reader and writer. In the seventh grade I had my worst English teacher ever she never explained anything and, when I asked questions she’d tell me to go sit down so I just never tried in there. We did weird activities that made no sense and, I never really learned anything from the class.