Literacy Narrative Without literacy, where would we be as a country? Think about that for a second.

If there was no common language, would anything ever get done? Or would we just be stuck in a world with no answers to problems or any means of communication between one another? Would civilization even still be here? These are very meaningful questions. Something as simple as literacy, which we all learn at a young age, has been used to shape the world today. Literacy learning starts when we are very young and is continued to be learned pretty much throughout our whole lives. In my life, it all started when I was just a little boy being raised by my single mother. She taught me everything I know and most of my vocabulary and dialect has been learned from her. I started my trek of literacy learning as a young child and I am still continuing it today in this English 1103 class. Many of the memories of my first encounters of literacy have faded away; but I have a few that can be generalized for my entire childhood. Reading and writing are the basics that are learned at a young age. I remember being so confused and overwhelmed by what letters were and how when you put any combination together it will make a word that others will understand. Learning that letters made words and words made sentences and sentences turned into conversations created a sense of awe about what language really meant to people. The whole aspect of communication still amazes me to this day. Where did it come from? Who was able to figure out all the letters and put selected ones together to make a word that can be generalized over the whole population? Have you ever actually thought deeply about a word? If you think about it, words sound very weird- for example, weird. Not only does it sound strange but it is amazing that it is well known and has a meaning behind it that everyone knows that it means. Maybe I am just thinking too deep into the components of literacy. Language was taught to me by many different teachers. It goes along with the saying that, it takes a village to raise a child. Literacy begun even before I was in school. My mom, as most parents do, would constantly be talking to me when I was a baby. If she opened the oven, she would say something as simple as hot so I would begin to learn to stand back. Or before going to bed she would say things like sleep. These constant interactions with words began to be implanted in my head without even knowing it. My mom raised me alone. In doing this, she taught me everything I know about the basics of literature. It came to my attention in high school that she has grammatical errors that she has always said and in turn I have picked up and said habitually. This literature of hers has worn off on me as that was what I was taught to say when I was growing up. Now a days, whenever she says the saying alls I know it sticks out to me since I was corrected on it. I point it out to her and we just laugh about it. Teachers at school then began to help me put everything together. I learned to read and write in school as most kids do. The same letters were written over and over and over again until perfection of the lowercase and uppercase form was mastered. Once I knew the basics of words, I could start putting them together to form actual words and then eventually sentences. Once the logistics of making basic sentences were put together, it only grew from there to putting paragraphs and papers together. Later in education, once middle school came around, more experienced concepts were put into effect using adjectives, nouns, pronouns, etc. into more complex sentences. I particularly did not like reading

or writing throughout middle school and most of high school. In middle school our teachers made us read out loud and I would always hate getting called on. I was shy and embarrassed and most of the times I would make myself so nervous to the point that I would stutter, mispronounce an easy word or even skip a whole word. I also had a problem of keeping up with what line I was on when reading aloud. I would have to run my finger along with every word that I was saying so I would not skip a line. If I didnt do this I would go back and re read the same line I just read and I would make a fool out of myself. This didnt just happen when I read aloud; I began to read with a piece of paper, bookmark, or index card. I would put the paper right under the line I was reading therefore I could only see the line I was currently reading and when I reached the end of the line, I would slide it down one line. This made it so that I would no longer re-read the same line. Reading out loud led me to not be a huge fan of reading. Along with this, the constant 5 paragraph essays and the writing tests made me hate writing. All throughout grade school, we were forced to write the standard 5 page paragraph paper. This took away and creativity in writing as we had to write an introduction paragraph with a thesis, three body paragraphs, and a conclusion paragraph restating the thesis. Any critiquing to my writing made me no like writing because I feel like I could not be myself or be creative in writing because it all had to be written to a specific style, voice, or format. The writing test was a big factor to me not enjoying writing. Even though I always did above average on the writing tests, I would get so stressed out about writing it. I was always worried that the prompt was going to be extremely difficult and impossible to write about. The time limit also was very scary as I thought I wouldnt have enough time to plan and structure a decently written paper. All these negative experiences grew to me disliking English (reading and writing) as a whole. To this day, I do not like reading. It puts me to sleep and I cannot focus one hundred percent on what I am reading so I do not comprehend it fully. I used to read fiction books in elementary school all the time because it was the only genre that was appealing to me and I wanted to get AR points. AR points were awarded by taking quizzes on books after you finished reading them. Teachers gave incentives on reading and earning more points. I vividly remember my third grade year reaching over two hundred points and getting to ride in my teachers thunderbird convertible to steak-n-shake one weekend. This reward system made me start to enjoy reading books that I chose myself. But of course, in high school students were forced to read books for classes that werent all that entertaining. I despise reading books that are assigned to me and that I know I am going to be tested on the concepts of that book. It wasnt until my junior year in AP English 11 when I really started to understand and appreciate literature. I had a great teacher who didnt just care about her test scores. She worked hard on planning fun and entertaining lessons for the day. Her name is Mrs. VanThillo. She is a short plump lady that always cared about what was best for you. As soon as you saw her rosy cheeks and her smiling face, you knew it was going to be a good day. She was always there for me when I would e-mail her late at night for help on a paper or for her opinion on something I write. Mrs. VanThillo taught me that there is no set right or wrong answer to writing. She told me that as long as you write about something and are able to back it up with facts and anecdotes, then it is going to be right. Mrs. VT helped me find my voice in writing and explained to me how everyone has their own style of writing. Depending on the audience of the paper will affect the voice you use in writing; but for the most part your voice stays the same

throughout all works of literature. This is how she is able to determine if we cheated and used someone elses work instead of ours. By the end of the semester she could determine who wrote the paper based on our voice in the writing. Not only did she prepare me for the AP exam, she also had us practice our speech and public speaking for our graduation project. Every year our high school has a project that seniors must complete. It starts junior year and is not over until the end of senior year. It consists of a 10 page research paper on any topic that is completed by the end of the English semester junior year. Senior year we have to give a 8-10 minute presentation on our topic in front of 5 judges as well as prepare a product and trifold poster board with our project on it. My teacher made our class perform a two minute long speech that was given on a topic that we received seconds before speaking. This impromptu speech was graded on the ability to talk in a professional manner without using verbal crutches such as like and um. I really enjoyed this speech as my topic was scratch and sniff stickers. This silly topic not only made me more comfortable talking in front of everyone, but it also made me be able to express freely what I wanted to say in a professional manner. She gave the class one more public speaking project. This one was more professional as it required us to dress up for class and present a 5 minute speech on a researched topic. This was a struggle for most people in the class as they were extremely nervous to speak in front of others. I did my speech on the importance of wearing sunscreen. It added humor to the speech because the whole class knew that I am a fair skinned ginger who burs extremely easily. Not only did it help me practice for public speaking, it was also very interesting researching facts and condensing them so they all flow into one smooth presentation. Going back to the questions I asked in the beginning of the first paragraph, I believe this world would not be able to function without literacy. We would still be stuck in the barbaric era with no common education, ideas and inventions would be impossible to spread and implemented. It reminds me of the movie Idiocracy where an average Joe hibernates and awakes 500 years into the future when language and education is forgotten. The world is covered in trash and he is considered the smartest man in the world because he can do simple tasks and understand simple concepts that would be common sense by todays standards. To think of the world getting to a point like this is unfathomable and I believe there is no way for this dumbed down state to ever occur. But maybe the world would be sort of like this is there was no literacy in the world. It would probably be a whole lot worse than portrayed in the movie. I believe that without starting the basics of talking, reading, and writing at a young age then it would be much more difficult to be educated on literacy. In Helen Kellers case, she had no choice but to start learning at the age of seven and the fact that she was even able to learn is outstanding. I cannot even begin to imagine not being able to hear or see anything. I would believe that these setbacks would make it impossible to ever read or write but Helen clearly overcame these obstacles as she is now a very acclaimed author. The amount of determination and will for her to learn to read and write is unimaginable. It makes me feel like my whole life I had it easy. Malcolm X had an inspirational story as well. He was able to educate himself confined in a jail cell by learning the dictionary front to back. The amount of determination it would take to do this is right up there with Helen Kellers. These stories inspire me to continue my literacy learning and help me strive to be the best I can be.

From the very beginning of life, I have been working on literacy skills. It had to start somewhere basic such as saying my first words, writing my first letters, and being able to read texts. These basic knowledges have formed into skills which allow me to read important documents, be able to communicate effectively with other people, and write professional texts to others. All of the skills I have learned by interactions with others, being educated on literacy topics in school, learning at a young age by parents have been compiled and have gotten me to where I am today in my literacy awareness. This knowledge will continue to be important in my future as I plan to become an engineer. In my engineer classes I have found out that engineering is not just mast and science like I previously thought; it also involves a considerable about of reading along with writing. In order to get a job done, job plans and reports have to be read and understood thoroughly even before starting to work on the job. I have to make interactions with contractors and employees using proper and professional grammar and business etiquette. Without all of the skills I have learned since I was a young child, completing these tasks in my future would be impossible.