Personal Narrative: How Reading Changed My Life

In today’s society reading is essential to function. Everywhere people turn they are required to read directions, labels, books, what’s going on in the news, or mandatory rules they need to follow. Just think about if a majority of the world couldn’t read how chaotic society would be.

My wonderful and unpleasant experiences with literacy have taken place throughout my education. For example, one of my positive experiences with literacy was in high school with my senior project. I was able to overcome barriers as I worked on my senior project for my English class. I researched my topic and wrote a twenty-page paper and after presented the project to a panel of judges. After all the work was done I felt very proud of myself. In pushing through the editing process with every revision. Taking the time to do the research and implementing it into the project. I definitely felt like insider in doing the whole senior project from beginning to end. On the other hand an unpleasant experience with literacy would have to be WEPT at

“How Reading Changed My Life” is the book from where the piece of fragment that we read was taken. This book was written by Anna Quindlen. I was able to relate to Quindlen’s perspective and strongly agree with her. Although children have more extra time to read their favorite books over and over again, adults were children and if they liked to re-read books in the past because the book was in their interest, they will also reread their favorite novel in the present.

There are 26 letters in the English alphabet. Just 26 letters to form words, sentences, paragraphs, and finally books. Our language has come a long way over the years, and reading has highly impacted the way we live our daily lives. The Greeks used books of mythology to explain how things came to be and pass that knowledge from generation to generation. Authors use books to tell stories, and ideas, which spread so much farther than just by the word of mouth. Yes, books have greatly changed the world around us and have also affected my life personally.

I believe that my literacy past has affected the reader and writer I am today. There is a lot I can talk about that has has an effect on me being the reader and writer I am today. One being the country and environment I lived in as a kid. In Gambia teachers don’t take reading seriously as they should. We as nursery students, focused more on learning how to spell and doing the math and also writing. We weren’t giving much books to read, maybe one or two books the whole semester. And because of that, I wasn’t a fond reader. Regardless of us not given books to read, we were giving many writing exercises so that really helped. My family however thought that reading is very important and because of that, they bought my siblings and I lots of book

My experiences as a writer have been both very engrossing and strenuous. I have learned a great quantity on both reading and writing, though, I continue to struggle on things that I have learned by this time, making the same mistakes that I do not even realize. Sometimes things are not so easy to understand when reading information, especially if the wording of an article is difficult for example. I love the idea of learning new things everyday. These past years as a writer have been very interesting, and I have learned and grasped many concepts I have been taught along the way.

What started your desire to read? I bet that it was not some government issued reading program. How bad, did those programs bore you in school? It was different for me. Have you ever heard of the accelerated reading program? Well, the accelerated reading program began my love with reading.

My High school English teacher explained the project to us in careful detail, as most of the students grumbled in agony at the mere thought of an 800 word essay, I chuckled . I began to read and write in elementary, but like all my peers I never really cared for it. I had no talent for math, history, or even classes like art but I excelled at one subject... writing. Despite my love for the subject in my life I have never read an entire book until high school were I read the novel Frankenstein.

Diving into past memories is something I am never found of. There is a lot of pain hidden behind some of my past experiences, but also a lot of triumph. It is always interesting to force yourself to retrieve some of those hidden memories. Sometimes the things you remember can be very surprising. Things that seemed long forgotten, can abruptly come back in a flash. The farthest memory I can recall about my own literacy experience is when I began first grade. At this stage, I remember feeling very confused about the whole purpose of going to school. I felt as if I was the only one not being able to keep up with the other children. I didn’t know what was cool, how to make friends, or even know how to play board games like “Candyland.” I was just not exposed to certain things that the other children in my class were aware of prior to beginning first grade. Most of all, I did not like learning. I liked doing things

My understanding of literacy has expanded over the course of my education. At the time, it came to my understanding that literacy was just an ability to learn how to read and write. Although this has been a part of my education, over time I have come to understand that literacy is a complex journey that involves learning how to take the written word and manifest on what it means to express yourself through writing. It also involves the ability to express your opinions and feelings through the written word. Clearly, this is not something that is mastered in elementary but, over time I got better. As a college student, I still feel like my literacy is evolving. The reason for this slow assimilation is greatly tied to my mistakes. As I will demonstrate through this autobiography of my literacy, experiences gained through the process of “growing up” really do inform a person’s literacy acquisition. In this

When I think about moments that have defined my education, a few particular moments come to mind. These include when I learned to count, when I mastered multiplication, and when I memorized the quadratic formula. But perhaps the most important moment in my education was when I first learned how to read. However, being able to read almost became something I hated and dreaded doing. Luckily, one moment prevented that misfortune from happening.

Throughout my childhood, college education has always been a concept in the minds of my parents and I. As a result, it was my duty to excel in my studies and achieve that idea of having great success. In order to pursue that dream I had to learn how to read and write which had many ups and downs. Therefore, my youth was overtaken by many hours learning how to read and write in the correct “Standard” English.

My literacy journey had begun earlier than most kids, according to my mother. I started reading in kindergarten, with help with the BOB books and the PBS show Between the Lions. I don’t know when I had started writing exactly, but I remember clearly writing short stories about my cat Stormy in 3rd grade. At that time we had to write weekly short stories, and I only ever wrote about my cat. In 4th grade, I had started exploring writing more; I would write plays for me and my friends to practice during recess. Most of them, I’m happy to say, were actually educational, so my teacher had even let my friends and I perform one about early-American settlers in front of our whole class.

A literacy narrative is quite often thought of as a personal account as to how the written word has affected one’s life. My literacy narrative, however, embodies my passion of art to define who I am and how it has determined who I have become. Photography has been a dominant part of my life since I was born; my mom loved to take pictures of me playing and she would get in pictures with me wherever we traveled. She would buy these cheap, disposable cameras in bulk and just let us kids play with them or she would take enough pictures of us that we felt like her little models. Sometimes, she would even develop the film she thought might be promising and add the photos to our baby albums she cherished so deeply. My mom was my budding inspiration for photography, and she is still my biggest supporter today. I have to thank the twenty-first

My earliest experience with reading and writing were traumatizing especially when I was in the first grade. I still recall the experience I went through to this day. It made me really hate myself because the other kids were making fun of me.