My First Outlook Provided For My Life

Literacy memories and events began at a young age for me, and while teachers and family members all impacted my opinions and preferences for reading, every book I read and writing assignment given to me helped me form my literacy story and come to enjoy reading. Many literacy moments came from when I was young, like my mom or dad reading to me before bed or teachers reading to me at school their favorite books. All of these memories were accompanied by everyone saying how great reading was, and for a while I didn’t believe them. I had so many forced experiences with reading that it was almost painful for me to pick up a book. But as time went on and the reading I was still forced to do intensified, a better relationship with reading and writing

Parents – Children are always influenced by their parents. For a child to be brought up in an environment which promotes learning as a positive thing and encouraging their child’s education, it will give the child the right, enthusiastic attitude. The child will understand from their parents the benefits of learning, the options, and opportunities it can open in their future. With the support

Richard Rodriguez, in the passage “Remedial Reading” from his autobiography “Hunger of Memory”(1982), promotes active reading as a developer of one’s mind. He justifies his position by describing his initial experiences with reading, specifically his attachment to the reading. Rodriguez’s anecdote functions as an encourager of stubborn minds trying to read and displaying its potential to change their life for the better. Rodriguez uses a very descriptive style that may be too verbose for children but compliments the verbosity with enough explanation of his purpose for his message to be known or ascertained.

Throughout all of time, literature has played an important role in people’s lives. Books are more than just stories to laugh at, cry with, or fall asleep to, but books can teach. Books can teach a person a simple task such as baking cookies or an extremely complex one such as solving for the derivative of a trigonometric path and its parabolic motion. Whatever the subject, whomever the reader, books can teach people many lessons. One of the most important lessons that a book can teach a reader is a lesson about himself, about the difficulties of life, and about living a good life. As time has passed, so has literature itself. Older books focused on historical events, fictional poetry, and important figures; however, books now have evolved to

Reading is the beginning of every child’s learning. The basis of education begins with learning to read. Short (2010) explained that literature acts as “an inquiry to life” and a “way of knowing” (p. 50). However, in order to support children’s learning, it is essential to show children that learning is interesting from a young age. When Short first began teaching using worksheets and a basal reading program, she wrote, “I often felt that children were learning to read in spite of me” (p. 49). The students were not learning to think critically. However, when she began introducing literature circles to her students, she saw them “critically exploring their understandings with each other” (p. 49).

My mom signed me up for the community library when I just turned 6 years old. Even if I did not know how to properly read at the time, I had to go there every afternoon to keep myself busy as an only child. Being opened to books at such an early clearly has had a major impact on my life and personality. From the local tales of my beloved Senegalese society to the deep and sophisticated French literature, I have traveled through cultures and generations. Whether it is Emile Zola’s collection of novels or Albert Camus’s philosophical texts, these books raised me and taught me about life, love, and resilience. As times went by, reading was no more a regular pastime but a detrimental part of my existence. The lessons and morality I gained from each story always pushed me to challenge the status quo, to be curious, to be adventurous but most importantly to be a problem solver.

I viewed reading as a chore, was often unenthused, and would mostly annotate on the overarching themes without gathering any meaning from them. Books were merely a series of words printed on paper. This school year, however, I began to understand the allure reading has to offer. I have grown to appreciate reading and the insights a book can offer. When reading our numerous texts, I was able to live vicariously through the characters of the books and relate aspects of their lives to my own. Because all of the books from English I pertain to coming of age, I was able to not only learn about maturation as a process, but understand how it pertains to my own life. Through protagonists such as Holden Caulfield from The Catcher in the Rye or Esperanza from The House on Mango Street, I learned about my “misguided desire to preserve childhood innocence” and to empower feminism similar to Holden and Esperanza respectively (Heart of Gold, Raghuram). Gradually, I have finally developed the ability to relate to novels and its characters amidst writing my own story.Whether it be thematic elements or the details of a case I am working on, I have become more observant to even the most trivial details. Now when I read, I not only look at the themes, motifs, and symbols, but also repeated phrases or situations that parallel each others as well as the symbolic meaning behind some ambiguous phrases or scenes. Reading now, in contrast to last summer, is a

Growing up, I had always loved reading; it intrigued me and stimulated me in ways the typical preschool and Kindergarten lessons couldn’t. I’d come home from a long day of coloring shapes, wrists sore from fiercely

Growing up in a family of six, there was never a shortage of people to read to me, the only shortage that existed was my ability to understand and appreciate the story in front of me. I was always on the move and the sedentary act of reading a book never appealed to my childish motives. Coupling my inability to hear well and my stagnant progress in school, I was quickly falling behind. With most of my childhood dedicated to the fantastical world I had created, I had no time to listen to someone else’s story. I would not continue on this way though, for my mom, noticing my lack of literacy skills, made it her effort to divulge in me the wonders of someone else’s world, each world becoming a part of my own.

In grade school, I was never the one who was passionate about reading. However, when it came time to write a story, I was excited and even wrote stories on my own. In third grade, my friends and I would write fictional stories during lunchtime and present them to our teacher after recess. I can still remember the sense of pride we felt when we saw the surprised and proud looks on our teacher’s face. It made us want to write more and more. But years went on, and I still never formed a fondness for recreational reading. I’ve been assigned more than five books a year in the past; some would catch my interest, but never enough to pull me in as much as to read in my spare time. There were rare occasions when I was really pulled into a book that was assigned to me. To this day I do not know if that was because of the mere thought that I was not willingly reading the book, or just that I did not have the patience for it. All

Since the dawn of time, humans have learned to communicate through certain writings or stories. Many individuals have benefitted from the gift of reading that we take so much for granted these days. The hunger for knowledge is a basic human instinct that has took place and influenced many people's lives, including mine. But I ask myself these questions. Is knowledge reading, or is reading knowledge? Can reading influence your life choices? Well here I am, thinking back on my childhood clouded by parental disputes and my adventure as a reader and how it has influenced my life today. My reading experiences as a child up to the present have had a great influence on me. My goal in this paper is to take you through a journey of my experiences

In this mahogany library sat a child. This child was not me. Rather, it was my brother who spent all of his formative years reading. He read everything he could get his hands on. Since I was young, I have always been astounded by the speed at which he reads. I suppose he followed in my mother’s footsteps, who often calmed her nerves after a long day of work with one of her many murder mystery novels. My sister and little brother also indulged in the gift of literature. I, however, followed more in the footsteps of my father. Of course, I

As a young child, every night before bedtime my mom would always sit down on the living room sofa with my sister and me, reading story after story, until it was really past our bedtime. We read pieces of literature like “Charlotte’s Web”, “The Little House on the Prairie”, “The BFG” and my favorite, “Junie B. Jones”. But at such a young age, I didn’t realize that my mom was reading these fictional stories to teach my sister and me important lessons and morals about life. It is very important to read and understand literature, and not just for reasons of pleasure. Ceridwen Dovey suggests that reading fiction “is a way of treating ourselves better” (2). I believe that by reading pieces of literature, you are becoming a better you, by learning important life lessons and qualities, both desirable and undesirable.

A desire to learn is not the output from going to school at an early age, but by influences from home life. Children pick up on even the subtlest, minute mannerisms the adults around them carry. I consider myself lucky knowing this fact, for I was a constant witness of my mom reading, writing in a journal, and motivating my brothers to do their schoolwork. Whether my mom was aware of the work she was doing or not, she certainly made a difference on how I approached school. For most, school is considered a job, an annoying everyday task. But the way she taught was graceful and fluid, leaving it pure nature to follow her words. Learning at home was not about being better than anyone else, except the you from yesterday. Simply put, her way of teaching could be mirrored by the famous Einstein quote, “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” This tactic helped me tremendously in not comparing myself to others work. The public school system

From an early age I loved to read. At just two years old I would beg my mother to enroll me into school. I watched as my older sister meticulously picked out her outfit each night in preparation for the next school day. At such a young age I somehow knew that this thing called “school” was the answer to something spectacular. My home was chaotic and reading became an escape and helped distract me from the unpleasant family dynamic.