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Rajan Patel Ms. Hoffman English 1101-002 May 9th, 2013

Literacy Memoir Literacy is an important aspect with enabling a person to function well in society and in this world. Each person who is literate has a different amount of literacy and I find that I have a great amount of literacy. Family can have an influence on ones literacy, my family didnt have too much influence on my literacy because my parents came from a different country but they did encourage me to be as literate as possible. My parents did this by teaching me to have ethics to work hard in life and try my best at everything. I believe there are a wide range of components involved in literacy. Writing is the component of literacy that has always been a challenge for me throughout my life. My writing did of course improve over the years but it continues to be a struggle for me. If I do manage to write well I still struggle with the writing. Writing is a challenge for me and I also dont like writing, which makes writing even harder for me. Every time I write its always frustrating for me because either I dont know what to write or Im having difficulty to formulate a sentence. Throughout school I dreaded when I had to do writing assignments like essays, papers, or writing prompts. Writing prompts especially annoyed me, I did so many of them throughout elementary, middle, and high school and I didnt enjoy doing any of them. Writing prompts to me are utterly pointless but I do find there is purpose behind essays and papers even that I believe that, I still dislike them. Im definitely not someone that writes for fun, I only write when its absolutely necessary. I may not be an awful writer but

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for an intelligent individual, I dont write as well as I should. Even though writing is a challenge for me reading isnt a struggle for me and I actually dont mind to read but I dont really read for fun. The only materials I read for fun are articles on the Internet. The components of literacy that are also not a struggle for me are public speaking and using technology. I first noticed that writing was a struggle for me in the 3rd grade and I also first disliked it then too. I remember doing a lot of writing prompts in this grade; this is probably the first time I had to do a great deal of writing prompts. Every time my class was assigned to do a writing prompt I dreaded it. I felt a considerable amount of frustration because I always wasnt quite sure what to write and due to all this I was usually the last one to finish. I didnt have any problem with anything else in school during the 3rd grade, based on that I found that writing was a weakness of mine. During this grade is when I first discovered that writing was a weak point of mine, from then on writing continued to be a struggle for me. I experienced the same or maybe even a greater amount of struggle with writing in 4th grade, plus there was the writing test in this grade which intimidated me by the mere sound of it. I felt a great anxiety about the impending writing test. I found great distaste in the idea of a big writing test like this; I didnt understand why there was a need to have a test of this sort. There was a great deal of preparation for the writing test, this preparation involved many writing prompts, learning techniques to organize our thoughts before we write a prompt and other things. Of course I didnt like this preparation for the writing test since I didnt like writing in the first place and I didnt like to prepare for something that I disliked. All the involvement with writing during the 4th grade made this grade level less fun for me. When the time approached towards the date of the writing test, I felt great apprehension because I knew I wasnt going to do well on this test. When the day of this test arrived I knew I wasnt prepared and when I was writing it, I had difficulty determining

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what to write therefore this caused the test to be a struggle for me. If I remember correctly I didnt do too well on the writing test. I continued to have a struggle with writing in middle school but it improved somewhat from elementary school. The struggle with writing in middle school was more pronounced in seventh grade because that was one of the grades that had the dreaded writing test. I still felt the same distaste with writing in the 7th grade as I felt in 3rd and 4th grade. There wasnt quite as much preparation for this writing test as there was for the 4th grade writing test. The preparation for the writing test was primarily done 1 or 2 weeks prior to the writing test. I felt quite anxious towards this writing test, similar to my feelings towards the previous writing test. I had the same issues towards determining what to write for the 7th grade writing test as I did towards the previous writing test. I later discovered that I didnt too well on this writing test. I find the experience I faced with the 7th grade writing test and the experience I faced with the previous writing test are parallels to each other. Therefore this illustrates that my struggle with writing didnt falter considerably from the 4th grade to the 7th grade but fortunately this struggle didnt become worse. The 10th grade is when I received a personal assistant after I came back to school after my spinal surgery and the recovery following this surgery. Receiving a personal assistant made a great positive impact towards my high school education. She noticed right away that I struggled with writing. She helped me significantly with writing and her help benefited me greatly in the future. She did this by critiquing my writing assignments before I turned them in and she advised me how to write more scholarly. I continued to struggle with writing even with my personal assistants help but I struggled less with her help. The 10th grade was another grade that had a writing test but I wasnt too worried about the test. There were more important things to be concerned about in the 10th grade. When I had to take the writing test for the 10th grade, I experienced the same issues with determining what to write as I did with

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the writing tests in the 4th and 7th grade. I didnt do too well on the 10th grade writing test, the same as my performances with the writing tests in the other two grades. I didnt receive much preparation for the 10th grade writing test from my English class. I experienced a significant amount of struggle in my 10th grade English class and I didnt have a good teacher for that class. I disliked all the essays and papers I had to do in that English class and they were all difficult for me but it helped greatly that I had my personal assistant to assist me with the essays and papers by critiquing them after I wrote them. I didnt find too much enjoyment from my 10th grade English class. This English class was my least favorite of all my English classes in high school. The struggles I faced with writing in the 11th grade were primarily in my English class. One of those struggles was to write these essays called weekly readers every week. My assistant did critique these essays, by editing them and I then turned in a revised copy based on these changes to the teacher. Thanks to my assistants help, I was able to make As on the majority of the weekly readers. Another struggle in my English class was when I had to do this project that required a great deal writing and this project was quite a challenge for me but it helped that my peers in the class could critique my writings for the project, this was in addition to the critique my assistant provided towards my writings for the project. Even though this project was quite a challenge for me I was able to do really well on it. The struggle I faced with writing in the 12th grade was when I had to write three papers for the UNCCs Levine Scholarship. Writing the papers for this scholarship was quite a challenge for me but Im grateful that I had my assistant to help me with these papers and other people also helped me with the papers too, this was the only struggle with writing I faced in the 12th grade. I believe that even though I always had a struggle with writing, my writing improved considerably over the years and if it wasnt for this improvement, I would have experienced an even greater struggle.

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I noticed in the 3rd grade that reading was a strength of mine. Reading continued to be a strength of mine in the 4th grade and I read for fun in this grade. The 4th and 5th grade was when I read a great deal of books for fun. One of my favorite books during 4th and 5th grade was this book called Dragon Rider, I really enjoyed this book and I couldnt put this book down until I finished reading it. My school had this thing called Accelerated Reader (AR) which is this thing where students read books and then take a quiz on the computer with a certain number of questions based on the length of the book and receive points from taking these quizzes. Students receive incentives if they gain a certain number of points each nine weeks. Accelerated reader helped encourage me to read for fun. The beginning of middle school is when I began to read less for fun, even though AR was there but I had slightly more work in middle school. I simply was losing my interest in reading for fun. I wasnt quite sure why I was losing interest in reading for fun but all I knew is that this was occurring. I continued to participate in AR during middle school but I possessed less interest in reading. Even though I possessed less interest in reading, it didnt develop into a struggle but reading wasnt as much of a strength for me in middle school as it was in elementary school. In high school I read even less for fun but of course I had to read a great deal especially in my English classes. I enjoyed a good many of the readings required in the high school English classes for example, To Kill a Mockingbird, Beowulf, Macbeth, and Romeo and Juliet. My Public Speaking class had a significant effect on my public speaking and how I felt about it. This was a class I really enjoyed and learned a great deal about public speaking. I didnt have a fear about public speaking before I took this class but I didnt know too much about public speaking therefore what I learned in public speaking was all new territory to me. Even though I was learning about completely new information, I wasnt frightened by this

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information but I was only fascinated by it. I definitely dont regret taking the public speaking class but Im grateful that I took the class because it enabled me to gain knowledge about public speaking that I otherwise wouldnt have gained elsewhere. Using technology has never been difficult for me, ever since I started using it except if I had to type a whole lot. The time I started using technology extensively was in 3rd grade when my class went to the computer lab to learn about how to use PowerPoint, word, excel, and internet explorer. I used the computer before this but I didnt have too much understanding of it and only used it then to play games. I remember even crashing the computer few times too. I also played games on my Gameboy too. I really enjoyed the sessions in the computer lab and I found them quite interesting. I begin to use the computer more at home because the sessions in the computer lab made me interested in computers. My Gameboy also helped make me interested in technology in general. Since the times in the computer lab I continued to enjoy using technology. The time I started to use technology a great deal in school begin in 3rd grade till 5th grade. Beginning in 6th grade, using technology was about using what was learned about it from elementary school and then applying it. I did take a computer class from 6th till 8th grade but it had more emphasis on typing. I wasnt the fastest typist even though I exceled at using technology. Typing was the only aspect of technology I didnt enjoy, especially if it was a great amount of typing. Since I didnt like typing, I didnt like this class and I also didnt like the class because I felt under pressure to finish the assignments. In 7th grade I started to use computers to do research for projects. Projects were the main reasons to use technology in 7th grade and also in 8th grade. In 8th grade I remember doing a project called the I-search project which was a major project in this grade. The project was about choosing a topic and then researching about this chosen topic, then creating a PowerPoint presentation based on the information gained from

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the research. This project took considerable expertise with technology and that was definitely not an issue for me. The topic I chose for this project was nuclear energy and I had no difficulty researching this topic. I enjoyed learning about nuclear energy; I found it to be quite interesting. I ended up doing really well on this project, thanks to my hard work and my expertise in technology. High school was more about using technology then middle school. My skills with technology aided me well in high school, especially when I was assigned major projects that required the use of a computer. I also used a lot of my technological skills when I took a digital communications in 10th grade; however I struggled with the typing in this class. My struggle with the typing in this class was not as pronounced as it was in my computer class in middle school. In conclusion I find that many factors in ones life, good or bad, can affect their literacy in the future. I faced both the good and the bad; the good were my experiences with reading, public speaking, technology and my personal assistants help and the bad were my experiences with writing. I struggle with writing to this day and I also have the same distaste towards it too. My feelings towards reading now are about reading only if I have to, the way it was in middle and high school. I still feel good about public speaking, the same way I felt in 9th grade. Technology continues to be a strength and a passion of mine which is why Im majoring in computer science. In the end I believe one can function well in society, even if they struggle with an aspect of literacy.