Joseph Spinetto English 1103 Writing History Response Ever since I was little, I have never really enjoyed

writing. My parents pushed math and science more than the liberal arts. I first learned to write my name in preschool, but that is as far as I went. The first time I really started writing was in kindergarten. I had an excellent kindergarten teacher that was very understanding and helpful to me as a writer. In kindergarten I mixed up all my letters and numbers, by writing them backwards. My parents thought I was dyslectic because my writing was so atrocious. It was hard for me to write my letters the right way, which made it frustrating. I would mix my bs and ds, and ps and qs My teacher continued to tell them I wasnt and that I was just developing and would get the hang of it. My teacher had the class writing in a journal once a week about what ever we wanted. My mother still has the journal. To this day I still cannot read on word from it, but you can see improvement from beginning to end. My teacher was right and I eventually was writing just like all the other kids. I still have messy handwriting but it is defiantly legible. This was the beginning of my writing career. In elementary school, the next teacher that really made an impact in my writing was my second grade teacher. She pushed the subject of spelling, and was the first one to actually be strict about it. There was no more using phonics to spell everything. There were rules I had to follow, and I was a terrible speller. Spelling is one of the most important aspects of writing in school because almost everything I wrote was on paper, were I didnt have spell check. If I cant spell then it makes it harder to read the material I am trying to express. She also taught the elementary basics to sentence structure. Every morning when I came into class, I would sit down and there would be a piece of paper on the desk with a sentence or two on the board for me to copy onto the paper. After all of us copied the sentence she would explain the different parts of the sentence. Once I got further into the year, she would write sentences and intentionally put mistakes in them for me to catch and fix. They were not hard mistakes but they allowed me to focus more on the sentence structure at a young age. In third grade I had the writing test for the first time. My 3rd grade teacher had to teach me about proper writing etiquette. She taught me what paragraphs

were and how to start papers. Proper etiquette is important when writing because it lets the reader know how to read what they are reading. It separates ideas with paragraphs and tells when to take breaths with commas and periods. At this time I was starting to read adventure series. I wanted to be as creative as all the authors I was reading. They inspired much of the work I created at the younger ages. All of the papers I wrote were rudimentary stories that I got to make up based on a prompt. I liked writing like this because I was able to be creative. When I am able to be creative and imaginative, it is easier for me to write. I think thats because it is what I like to read too. I dont like reading scholar essays, but I like to read exciting novels. When I finally took the test, I made a passing 3 out of 4 on it. I was so proud of myself because lots of people fail that first writing test in 3rd grade. In 5th grade I learned how to write more complex and non-fictitious papers. They were almost like mini research papers. I did not like these as much as the writing I had been doing in previous grades because it wasnt as exciting. I had even more restrictions with formatting and I was introduced to MLA. We all have to learn this style because it is the most used in life later. Writing in elementary school is writing for one person. You are writing what the teacher wants you to write. I think writing should be more personal. Writing should have less restriction and more creativity. In middle school I wrote my first full-length research paper with sources and everything. It was the biggest grade I have ever received I any class. It had to be on what we wanted to be when we grew up. I wrote about car designers. I worked very hard, listening to the teacher tell me how to write it and I used any additional tips she had. She was the best teacher I have ever had in the subject of writing. She taught the language like no one else I have ever seen. I guess this is why she received the prestigious award teacher of the year in the county. I finished the eight page paper and eagerly awaited my grade. What I got back shocked me. I had received a 107 out of 100. I celebrated and my writing esteem rose. This is the point where I started to really hate writing. Even though I got a good grade, I did not like the idea of researching what somebody had already wrote and then express it in my own way. It felt pointless. I think in writing people should have to actually interview people and conduct their own research for it to actually mean something. Next came my high school years. I never had very good writing teachers in high school. All the teachers focused on was reading and analyzing books. Even though I was in

all honors classes, the only teacher who taught me anything about writing in high school was my junior teacher. She was a good teacher, but she was a push over. She would give me a 100 if I showed effort in my writing but never really critiqued it to make me better. This made me slack off and made me think I was a better writer then I actually am. I also had a huge research paper that year. It was a minimum of twelve pages; analyzing a theme in any of the books we had read that semester. I worked very hard and made a very good grade on it. As a writer I have had much experience, but I do not think I am at the point I should be. I should be writing at a college level, and I think I am still at the high school level. I still have much to learn and there are many areas I need developing in. I need the most help with organization. I jumble my thoughts many times when I write and dont think thoughts all the way through. I guess the best way to overcome this is through practice. Writing is the essence of creativity and expression for many people including me. It is a way to thoroughly put my thoughts onto a piece of paper. Writing is freedom and should be held at a higher standard.