Literacy Narrative

In my eyes, writing has always been such a nuisance. Every time a teacher would say the words “So you have your essays to write coming up...” I feel such a troublesome and displeasing feeling taking over my body. I have always had this unpleasant feeling because I knew I could not write a good essay. The thought of the process of me even starting to brainstorm aggravates me because I have difficulties focusing on something that does not please me at all. However, the discomforting feelings and thoughts started to change as I slowly learned to tackle the ways to construct a well written essay through help from school and through reading many books.

            When I was in elementary school, I used to enjoy reading books especially the ones my mother would purchase for me. I would also read books from the classroom library and sometimes take them home. I remember asking my mom for money to purchase books from the scholastic book orders they used to have in school. It was like a magazine with a few pages showing the variety of books one can buy. The last page contain empty boxes next to each and every book shown in the previous pages so the person can check off the boxes next to the desired books’ titles. The money is then given to the teacher in an envelope along with the page of the list of books the student wanted. She would then order the desired books of every student and in a few weeks, the order would come in. I used to get so excited when the teacher would say “the book orders came in today class.” The feeling of having new books excited me. That meant more new unread adventures for me at night before I go to bed. There were books like Magic Tree House, Junie B. Jones, and my favorite, Goosebumps. My love and passion for books as a child helped me discover and further develop my skills in writing in my elementary school days.

            Reading books allowed me to develop skills and use them towards writing. The more books read, means the more one’s vocabulary can be enhanced. All the new almost foreign like words whose definitions were unknown, I used a dictionary and looked them up. Next time I encounter these same words I at least have an idea of what they mean. Since reading deepens a person’s vocabulary, it allows them to become better writers.  Reading also helps with being creative because it allows one to witness how descriptive words can make such a difference in a story or even just a sentence. It demonstrates how different people or authors structure their writing. These skills helped me in my writing because it allowed me to choose from a variety of vocabulary words and use it in a descriptive way. Reading paved the road to writing, especially since it gave me a sense of how sentences or words should be structured and used. Even with these new skills, writing only gets more complicated as I got older. The next few years would require new skills and lessons on how to write.

            Junior high school came; there were many new harder assignments. We began to write essays in many different classes. I used to just start writing whatever I thought made sense without ever editing or reading it over later. My thoughts were not organized because I did not know what or how to organize my writing. Another issue was starting off the introductions of many essays. There would be an essay prompt or question and I used to be so disorganized that I would include ideas that were supposed to be in the body paragraphs in my introduction. Some teachers just assumed everyone knew how to write and never really explained in detail how to approach and begin an essay.

            One of my teachers in the 6^th grade started helping me with my writing. If I recall correctly, I did not do so great on one of my writing assignments and there was an after school program kind of like extended day. It meant that after the regular school day hours were over you would stay for a little longer to work on this you need help with. I decided to stay and ask for help with my writing because I want to be like the other students and get a high grade on my writing. Her name was Ms. Herman and she helped me with my writing skills. We would do multiple choice questions and she would change the question around to make it an extended response one. She said I should start off with a general statement in my introduction when writing. She suggested that I ponder about what I would like to discuss in my body paragraphs and just include the ideas in my introduction. That made sense and I just kept writing some practice introductions and she would read them over and give me advice and what I need to improve or change. Even though it was a few days after school for less than 2 hours, it really helped my writing more than before and helped build my confidence.

            Soon after the skills I have accumulated in 6^th grade, I used them to better my writing. There were still so many other factors missing that would improve my writing. I always thought that my writing was better but as I started writing more essays in high school, I realized that there is still more to improve on. There was a college now class in my high school for communications and I took that class. I was taught many more helpful ways to embellish my writing. I learned that outlining my ideas helps me keep track of my main points and exactly what I will discuss in further detail in my essay. This helped me keep a well structured piece of writing and cause my ideas to flow in a good sequence. Even though that communications class is to help with giving speeches and presentations, the writing is what really sets the structure for a good speech. A good well done outline is what will allow you to present a good speech. Taking this class was beneficial in the way that I finally used the lessons I learned from that class to developing my future essays.

            I felt like I came a long way from when I first started writing for assignments that were due in school. Even though I know that I can still improve in many ways and that there may be more to learn, it feels good to have a structure or foundation to writing. My experience with writing was never really a good one and I probably will never have a passion for writing but at least I am able to use the skills like how to start off my introductions, outlining the body paragraphs and my essay, and etc I learned to write a good piece of literature. From my 6^th grade teacher Ms.Herman to my communications class in high school, I am able to write papers for my current classes in college. Writing is still not such a pleasurable activity, but I am able to do it with less trouble and annoyance compared to in the past where I was such a lost writer.