Becoming Literate, One Experience At A Time By Shelby Hopkins

Learning how to read and write is essential to being successful and intelligent in our cultures society. Over the eighteen years of my life, many people and experiences have influenced who I am as a writer/reader today. My first vivid experience of becoming literate in writing occurred when I was five years old in kindergarten. My teacher, Mrs. Justus, gave each student a booklet filled with traceable ABCs. Each day we would trace a new letter and review the letters we had studied in the previous days. As a kindergartener, I was so captured by this new concept that I had never been exposed to. I recall coming home in the evenings and explaining to my mother everything about letters and the sounds they created when put together. Of course she played along, pretending it was all new knowledge to her as well, and acted just as excited as I was. Unconsciously, I was acquiring a skill that I would use throughout the rest of my life. Accelerated Reader was a program at my elementary school that introduced students to reading books of all difficulties. After completing a book the student then took a comprehension test and gained AR points, depending on how well they did on the test. This program really encouraged me to read additional books other than the readings required by teachers. In second grade I began by reading simple books with the points of five and ten. By the time I was in fifth grade I was gaining up to one hundred points from one complex book. At the end of fifth grade all the points I had acquired during elementary school were calculated together and I was awarded several different prizes. Because of the books I was reading, I was told that I had the

reading skills of an eighth grader. Accelerated Reader enhanced my abilities to comprehend books and boosted my self-confidence in reading. During my education in elementary school I learned how to properly place letters together to form words, words together to make sentences, sentences together to create paragraphs, and eventually paragraphs together to complete an essay. This is where I learned my basic skills of reading and writing that would only improve within the years to come. As a middle school student, the expectations of reading and writing rose and I began to fully understand concepts and objectives in writing. In eighth grade I completed my first elongated essay with the subject of my choice. I chose to write about being a neonatal nurse; I felt secure about easily writing the paper with this familiar topic. The length of the paper had to be five pages, which was intimidating at first. Since I had never written a paper like this before I was overwhelmed and nervous; after completing the assignment I felt relieved and realized I could successfully complete a long paper. I believe this was the turning point between me being an average and me being a sophisticated writer. My freshman year of high school was when I enjoyed the subject of English the most; my teacher, Mrs. Abramson, influenced this. Her personality was non-traditional compared to teacher I had encountered before. Her spirit was carefree and she was only concerned about her students enjoying everything that they wrote or read in her class. Usually I dreaded writing, no matter what kind it was, but in her class we wrote everyday and I did not even think twice about it. This class showed me that a teachers interaction with students corresponds with their participation and feelings towards the subject. This was undeniably a positive influence on my development in literacy within reading and writing.

In eleventh grade every student was required to write an eight page paper as his/hers senior project. The topic was anything of the students choice; the only requirement was that the subject had to have an argumentative perspective. Unlike the paper I wrote in eighth grade, I chose to write about an unfamiliar topic to broaden my knowledge. I chose the topic of canine companions, more specifically the difference between service canine companions and therapy canine companions. This was possibly the worst experience I have ever had while writing. My teacher only wanted to critique my ideas and not improve them. While approaching my fifth page I was lost and had no idea what else to write or how to expand the topics I had already discussed. I ended up turning to another English teacher at my school for her advice and assistance. This experience not only negatively influences my literacy but also taught me how to overcome obstacles when writing. During high school I soon realized I was expected to be literate in several different forms. Some of the subjects I became knowledgeable in included computers, music, and writing/reading in languages besides English. While completing a coarse titled digital communications I learned computer skills. This class taught me everything about computers and computer programs. Taking chorus helped me become more literate in music. We were required to be able to read music from scores so I had to quickly learn how to comprehend the material. In high school I also took three Spanish classes and learned a lot about reading and writing in this language. Even though the most know literacy is writing, I feel literate in all three of these subjects just as much as I feel literate in reading and writing. I believe that all of these experiences throughout my lifetime have some way shaped who I am as a reading and writing. The experiences I have mentioned have also formed how I perceive the definition of being literate. Literacy does not always have to do with English;

an individual can be literate in many different topics. By this literacy narrative, it is apparent that both positive and negative experiences compose how an individual performs within a subject, or how literate they are.