Personal Narrative: My Journey to Literacy Essays

Literacy impacts everyone’s lives in various ways. Such as, someone and their career, the ability to read literature in general, one’s comprehension of reading and writing, or the ability to write a book. Each person takes his or her own path with literacy and consequently are formed by the sponsors of literacy present in his or her life. Being new to the term or not, sponsors come in various forms and can be positive or negative to someone and his or her literacy. The sponsors of whom I am going highlight are my parents, The Sesame Street Show, and my elementary and middle school St. Mary’s all of whom have been positive sponsors to my literacy by setting high expectations and providing quality teaching, which still impacts my literacy today.

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.

Learning to read and write as a child is an experience that all can relate to. The average child learns to read and write at the early ages of three and four. Developing literacy at an early age is crucial to academic development as well as to performance in life. Early development can be just what a child needs to stimulate their minds, which in turn is assisting in the evolution of their future. The early and latter stages of development in a child’s literacy journey are the makings for their reading and writing skills. It also plays part in their analysis of obstacles as well as their developed or problematic literacy future. A child

The story of my history as a writer is a very long one. My writing has come full circle. I have changed very much throughout the years, both as I grew older and as I discovered more aspects of my own personality. The growth that I see when I look back is incredible, and it all seems to revolve around my emotions. I have always been a very emotional girl who feels things keenly. All of my truly memorable writing, looking back, has come from experiences that struck a chord with my developing self. This assignment has opened my eyes, despite my initial difficulty in writing it. When I was asked to write down my earliest memory of writing, at first I drew a blank. All of a sudden, it became very clear to me, probably because it had some

I have acquired many literacy opportunities throughout my literacy life my parents, grandparents, and teachers ,I hold them very close to my heart because if it wasn’t for them pushing and encouraging me to read and write I wouldn’t be the literate person I am today. I bear a huge family so there are always many voices going through my head so it wasn’t long until I started speaking, as well as comprehending what all these strange words meant recognizing the words was very difficult before I started practicing them. My parents always encouraged me to read and write in a way no child can resist with toys and candy who could say no to that. Every chance they got to help me read they would read with me. I wasn’t forced to read on my own because I didn’t know how.

There are two Educational philosophies that Rodriguez had utilized in his younger years. The philosophy of supporting Bilingual Education was to help Students acquire the skills of a classroom crucial for public success. Supporters would report that children miss out a great deal by not being taught in their family’s language. “They say that children who use their family language in school will retain a sense of their individuality- their ethnic heritage and cultural ties” (Kindle 6236-6237). Supporters would also say that children will have a sense of individuality that retains their family’s language. Giving children something to feel different and have something special. “But then there was Spanish. Español: my family’s language. Español: the language that seemed to be a private language.” (Kindle 5982-5983). Rodriguez shared how it was hard fighting between assimilating to American culture and keeping his connection and heritage alive within him.

Since I was very young, I have had a strong passion and fascination with words, an interest that was especially encouraged by family and developed through a variety of mediums. Like most babies, my first word was rather simple: “Da-dee” (“Daddy”). When learning my alphabet and numbers, my mom would play popular kid shows of the time, including “Sesame Street” and “Arthur,” on television and on audio tapes in the car. In addition, I enjoyed singing along with various Disney tapes and childhood favorites, such as Barney, Raffi, and Peter, Paul, and Mary. “I suppose you could say I was the ‘gatekeeper of my children,’” Mom recollects. “Without a doubt, I preferred for them to listen to musical tapes that were both educational and fun and believe it or not, if we listened to a tape plenty of times, I would actually start to sing along, too!” she laughs. When I was able to start formulating short phrases and sentences,

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.

In first grade, I had started reading, or that is what I recall as my first time. My stuttering problem was always there, but I was a “great reader” according to my teacher Ms. Brown. She was a kind elderly woman, who wanted to see everybody in her class succeed in reading a whole book. Then second grade came at the snap of a finger. There, I wrote my first paragraph full of “mumbo jumbo”. Even though I wrote my first paragraph in second grade, I did not learn about the writing process until high school. After I left high school, I learned that we had barely touched on the writing process due to a significant place in my life… College! In my first English class (Eng 180), my professor went over the ideas of rhetoric, the writing process, and discourse community. Since my old professor did not go in depth on these topics, meant that they were still fresh in my head with no place to stay. In English 280, we went into full detail on these topics and understood more about the meaning and purpose of them all. I know that the writing process includes brainstorming, researching, proofreading, revising, and etc.; however, I felt like I have been doing it all wrong for years. I have made many improvements to my writing due to English 280, but the skills that I improved in the most were researching and synthesizing.

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.

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

As a teenager, I now look back and realize how vital it is for children to learn to read and write at such young ages. I am so thankful for parents that read books with me before I even started school, and I am also thankful for the teachers who taught me vowel sounds, prefixes, suffixes, and much more. Teachers also taught me that reading could be fun, which encouraged students to want to read in their free time. Reading and writing are unique activities to me because these activities can be used academically or for personal entertainment. Reading has had a huge impact on my life in the past, present, and hopefully in the future.

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

Reading and writing has always played a vital part in my life. From toddler to adult, pre-elementary to college, I’ve managed to sharpen both skills to my liking. However, even though it significantly helped, schooling was not what influenced me to continue developing those skills into talent. Many different things shaped and influenced my learning, and now reading and writing have become the safety net of my life. I know that even if I have nothing else in the future, I’ll still have my talent and knowledge. To ensure my success, I hope to further develop those skills so that I may fulfill my wishes.

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.