Personal Narrative: My Failure In English

My achievement of becoming literate in both English and Spanish, after overcoming a myriad of obstacles distinguishes my literacy history. Writing was one of the things I didn’t like to do as a child. I always thought writing was a waste of time and that I wasn’t going to need it in life. Even though I didn’t invest much time writing, I was one of the best writers in all my classes, probably because I was very dedicated in the other subjects and I loved reading adventure books. I learned how to read and write by the age of four, since in my native country “the Dominican Republic”, kids are enrolled in school at the age of three; usually parents start their child’s education at home before that age.

Arriving in this class I didn’t really know what to expect, and having a fragile background in English I was a bit concerned on how I would perform. Carrying over twenty years of discouragement stemming from my high school years, I thought I knew enough but came to the realization I didn’t. After a few weeks of settling in to class it felt like doors that I didn’t know how to open could be now opened and ignited my desire for more knowledge. For the first time in my life I was excited to learn English and eager to use it. My reading was above normal along with my vocabulary, however my grammar, and writing structure was my weakest point and that’s what I wanted to focus on.

challenge and hurdle of my life. Growing up in a family with parents that only

One of my strong points in writing is coming up with ideas and knowing how to get started on a paper. I guess you can say I am a free writer. Whatever in my head ends up on paper and I could write about a lot of things that matters to me or upsets me and feel passion when writing it down, but there also a weakness that I can’t overcome because my inner critic come along with it. Which makes me completely change and overshadow my own writing. I have a problem with revising and not being able to see the flaws in my writing, but that’s not it. I overpower one topic with another one in other words I would mash up two topics that is the exact opposite of each other which contradict my whole paper. The other problem is shorting up a sentence as well

I was in your Rennaissance English class at Horn from 2001- 2004. I attended Stanford University for undergrad before moving to Washington, DC where I taught middle school math. After I left the classroom, I was a coach of first-year math teachers and then began coaching school principals on instructional leadership. This summer I moved to Cambridge, MA where I'm the Chief of Staff for the Achievement

As a Junior, in the spring semester I have grown more as a student and a global citizen.This spring semester I have gained more confidence as taking action and gain more knowledge. I have been able to take action in my community by doing a civil rights project for my AP Language and Composition class. This semester I have grown more knowledge as a student in my Digital Literacy class by creating a Fake News Essay to address how everything that is on the internet or media can be fake.

In high school I challenged my writing skills by taking advanced placement language and literature. Both courses assigned essays that required scholarly text to support my points and ideas stated throughout the paper. My biggest takeaway from these classes was that having textual evidence from reliable sources will help strengthen my writing, also known as ethos to persuade the audience. During my junior year I grasped the concept of ethos, pathos, and logos, how each could be used to shape writing concepts or perspectives. Personally it takes me a little bit of time to adjust from different writing contexts that need to be addressed, but I always thoroughly analyze instructions to reach success. I improve as a student when I practice analyzing

I am glad I got to read what Prose wrote about learning to write by reading. This explains why I am not a good writer, because I have never been a good reader either. I grew up in a culture where reading was very rare, plus finding a book to read was hard. I do agree with her that reading enhances writing. Most of the time when I write I tend to follow the tone or the structure of what I read before. I also agree with her that sometimes a good writer puts you to shame. I have read peer papers in class before and sometimes I was blown away by the good work I was reading.

Throughout my education and employment, I had positive responses to my writing and grammatical skills, I am now learning this was incorrect praise. When submitting my passage of writing to online proofreading applications and to friends and family for consideration the conclusion was that my writing is strong in most areas but it still needs work. Strengths are in my use of grammar, punctuation, and vocabulary; but both groups noted weaknesses in my use of too many unnecessary words, especially adjectives and verbs, weak starting of sentences, complicated language and frequent use of a passive voice. Even though the online tests did not show it as an issue, know I have weaknesses in some grammar rules, specifically "i before e except after c" and incorrect punctuation particularly when using informal language.

My growth in English 101 was a long and difficult journey for me this would be my second time around taking this class. The thing that was difficult for me in class was the fact my medication made me drowsy so it made it difficult for me to stay awake in class some days. I was lucky this time around I had a teacher that was energetic and kept me awake enough to understand what we are supposed to do in the next paper. When we did a new paper we learned a new style of writing and strategies on how to write it more effectively. I would say the most difficult paper that I had to write was the innovation research paper but I learned how to find credible resources faster. I learned a lot in this class and grew a lot as a writer. So the five WPA topics

My struggles began my first academic year in the fall of 2014. The course I enrolled in was a seminar course, that was led by an adjunct professor. Problems surfaced when the professor actions were less than professional on more than one occasion. On one event, she separated the immigrant/ minorities students from the rest of the class, to discuss our shortcoming as writers. We were informed that our poor writing was affecting us in class and in our practicum placement. The line of questioning and statements made by the professor was inappropriate as they concern our cultural background and our time in the country. Attempting to advocate for myself, the professor was notified that the issue had not been brought to my attention by my field instructor and my grade in the class did not reflect such statements.

The one time I experienced failure was last year in April. I had just finished a great indoor season and I was eager to start outdoor season. The reason why was because I wanted to accomplish some of the goals that I didn't get to accomplish during indoor season. I wanted to train hard, stay dedicated, and motivated. I started giving it my all at practice and no matter how hard practice was, no matter how tired I was I refused to give up. I told myself that this season would be a great one but I was wrong. Unfortunately, there were other plans for me, I ended up pulling my hamstring that year and not only was I devastated but I was upset. I put so much hard work and so much effort for someone to tell me that I might be out for the rest of

Sitting here i think about how absolutely terrible my writing skills are and I ponder on what I could possibly write about.10 things about one topic seems kind of difficult to think of when you have to have interest in the topic yourself. Last night I sat in my bed thinking of the easiest thing for me to write about and that is my stress. It’s something I can really talk about and actually put thought into. The ten things that stress me out most would have to be the following; feeling alone, getting the short end of the stick in most situations, my mom going to rehab, working for everything I have, emotionally and physically, how my sister gets treated by her boyfriend, my dad's feelings, my house being put up for sale, where my mom is going to end up after the house gets sold, my brother Steven passing away, and the constant drinking when I see my mom.

When I first came into Language Arts 10, I thought it was going to be a lot harder than last year. What I thought it was going to be like was that there was going to be many essays written and a lot of self-reading. It was honestly just like Language Arts 9. You had to read a book and write an essay every month or two. This year and last year were almost the same.

As a kid in high school I considered my least favorite subject to be English. I was never a very good reader or writer so my specific set of skills, or lack thereof, never really translated to very good grades. I would do enough to get by, but I never really attempted to get any better. I even went so far as to take my senior year of English in summer school in an attempt to get it out of the way early and not have to deal with the headache in my final year. After I finished high school I took a four year break from school so I admittedly got even worse. When I finally decided college is where I needed to be I decided to start showing maximum effort in my studies and knew that would eventually mean English composition. Throughout this