ENG101.02. Spring 2018. Emory University
It was truly enjoyable to be able to write about personal experience and in the first person. I always love to write when there is no prompt because it give me freedom to do whatever I want. It is weird to write about how I don’t like writing and reading in a writing and reading class but it was definitely interesting to do so.
Link to site: https://ibdodi.wordpress.com/literacy-narrative-part-1/
The following literacy narrative explores key events and progressions in my early life that shaped my current reading and writing ability. Describing how I iniitally learned to read and write was more challenging than expected, and not because it was difficult to recall events that took place so many years ago, but because it is hard to articulate learning a skill that is now so natural to me. It’s like describing how I learned to ride a bike. Which would essentailly boil down to a trial-and-error process of falling down and getting back up.
In writing this piece I was able to visualize my reading and writing progression chronologically, and quickly noticed some patterns. For instance, it seems that I always preferred the practice of writing to reading, predominately due to the freedom of creating my own arguments as oppose to absorbing those of others. I think the most unique attribute of my literacy narrative is my early eagerness to read and frustration with writing, which ironically turned to an aversion toward reading and a fascination with writing.
I really enjoyed this writing assignment. I’ve always been fearful of writing and enjoyed the more relaxed writing style and process for this mini essay. I also appreciated how the word count wasn’t daunting and was super manageable. The free-writing was a great tool and base for the start of my narrative. It allowed me to get my ideas out there on paper and then go back and form them in a cohesive and structured format. Free-writing is the start to the editing and improving process to ultimately reach the final work.
From writing my narrative I learned that as I got older, reading became less and less of a priority. Reading used to be a reward. Having the opportunity to read a book before bed was incentive for good behavior. Now it’s seen as chore or a burden because it’s assigned which is so sad to me. However, I’ve come to appreciate reading for pleasure way more than before.
Through writing this narrative I realized how unappreciative I was of my mom’s devotion to encouraging me to read and is something I hope to pass on to my kids one day. I also learned that I should actually commit to keeping a journal because that’s where I can freely express my thoughts and practice my writing simultaneously.
A sentence that I think readers would connect with, not necessarily find interesting is when I wrote, “Once I turned 10, it meant I said goodbye to “little kid” picture books and hello to “big kid” chapter books.”
https://rebeccatinklereng101s18.wordpress.com/literacy-narrative/
Preview of Narrative (work in progress)
What I learned from this task: Good to brainstorm and physically write out ideas. Easier to be messy/ add extra linking information. Makes it less daunting. Made me reflect on my childhood a lot. Strange things to think about but very interesting to try and pinpoint events.
Writing process: It was different to brainstorm ideas. Usually type down certain ideas, but they rarely link and it just clutters up my actual work document. Brainstorming made it much easier to begin the actual writing. I have lots of things I can talk about … usually I don’t know where to start.
What did you learn about yourself? I remembered how much I used to enjoy reading and I got to think about lots of happy memories. This writing made me realize that not all English writing tasks have to be boring/ dreaded. Always had conventional/ essay based English classes and so it is refreshing to try a new approach.
Most interesting sentence? (Work in progress)
This was a very tough essay to write.
The overall idea of what this narrative is attempting to say is that writing has been a big part of my life that has evolved from happy stories to real life situations. From writing at a young age, I’ve always found comfort in it, and it has helped me deal with the worst of times, especially in high school. Reading has also helped, but it has evolved drastically from interests in fiction to interests in facts.
During the process of writing this narrative, I had a lot of troubles. It was very strange to reflect on the majority of my life and pinpoint where reading and writing have significantly changed the course of my life. It’s almost surreal. The pre-write helped a ton, however. I poured countless stories, ideas, and emotions into just the pre-write, which made it both easy and tough for the actual draft. The plethora made it seem like there would be many choices, but it became tough when I realize that I wanted to include it all. Having a 750 word limit was an even greater challenge. Even after deleting a large portion of my writing, I was still well above 750 words, making it so that I had to be even more concise with my words.
I’ve learned that I’ve changed a lot as a person. I always told myself this, but I never really had the best evidence to prove this to myself. However, after a deep reflection, I’ve come to understand that I actually have changed a great deal, especially since junior year of high school.
I’m surprised that I’d been writing for so long. I’d always known that I wrote from a young age, but I had not yet connected the dots between my writing now and my writing then.
I hope that everyone can at least appreciate the last question asked in my post, and I believe that we are all still debating within ourselves the answer to that question.
Link to the post: https://explorationofcomics.wordpress.com/literacy-narrative-reading-and-writing/
My Literacy Narrative focuses on how I was growing up and loving (and at one point even hating) to read. I tried to describe every single thought in my head as clearly as possible. However, at some moments it seemed hard to transfer them into this essay. I decided to use the freewriting exercise and it made the process of writing this narrative much easier and faster due to the fact, that I was forming my essay by putting together all these pieces created separately (answers to the questions from freewriting exercise) into one big picture. When I finished writing the essay and began adding the picture that I took during the winter break when I went back home, I started reading my narrative again from the beginning and came to the conclusion, that what seemed difficult to start turned out to be an enjoyable and great experience.
How did you learn to read and write? In my page, you will discover the reasons and the process from which I became a writer.
My process for writing this narrative felt considerably easier than papers I have written in the past. I think the freewriting before hand really helped guide me through the process. The act of answering the specific and simple questions almost wrote the entire paper by itself. This was very different than my typical process of staring at the blank page and waiting for inspiration to present itself from the ether.
Through writing the narrative I recognized the dedication my parents and the rest of my supporting cast gave me. This gave me a strong feeling of appreciation which I’d like to express to them some day.
The most interesting sentence in my opinion is, “I was disappointed in myself for not getting further but then realized I had unintentionally memorized the entire chapter in my head.”
From my memory, I learned how to read and write twice. One is Korean, and one is English. I can no longer what I read in Korean books anymore, but I know that my first book in English was The Holes.
During middle and high school, I really was disinterest in reading and writing. I didn’t hate it, but I would avoid taking writing related classes.
Only social network I have is Facebook, and I rarely use them. I never got into social networking culture. I felt that there was no need for me to express my thoughts in open public area.
My biggest struggle with reading and writing was properly utilizing English. I really never had best moment as a writer.
Ever since I was a child, I have been obsessed with text books, encyclopedia, and any sort of book which directly and explicitly states information, unlike novels, whose overwhelming amounts of sugarcoating and lack of conciseness bores me. Although these still comprise a great part of my passion for reading, I am still in search of other forms of recreational reading which deviate from my current interests. I’m kind of a tough cookie when I attempt to read a novel: I usually do not go beyond Chapter 1 if the content is not concise at my degree of liking. My childhood experiences in elementary school cemented this preference over explicit information rather than fictional, sugarcoated narratives.
As I wrote this analysis of my peculiar reading preferences, I realized it was about time to share my perspective with other people. Talking about my reading preferences is something I usually avoid, given that they deviate greatly from the general public. Writing was a breeze, especially after freewriting prior to its composition. In a sense, it was refreshing to finally let it all out after such long time keeping these thoughts to myself; it made me realize that not talking about this for so long has actually been a terrible idea, since my quirkiness opens up new topics of conversation, and possible recommendation of books that I might actually enjoy.
If there is one sentence in this essay that best reflects who I am, it would be the following:
“I went over to the kindergarten section of the library, did my “market research”, and did the math…”
I think now it’s the time to read about a chubby 5th grader against the world in my literacy narrative.
It’s a hard thing going back in time to when you first read a book. In remembering my past I remembered how difficult it was for me to learn to like to read, how long and arduous the path was but also how amazing it felt. From struggling to read a single page to falling in love with comics or picking up my first non-fiction book the experience was not only hard but rewarding. To convert those emotions and memory onto paper, however, is always a challenge and my literacy narrative shows that; it was not easy capturing those moments with words. The more lax writing style was very helpful and allowed me to be more creative. I think, given more time, I will be able to better portray those feelings. Overall it was a very interesting and challenging experience that I’m excited to see develop further in the semester.
I think this is a good line: “I used to hate books.”
