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Christopher Ramsburg Professor Raymond English 1103 13 September 2013 My Literacy Narrative through the Years During my life, there have been many events and circumstances that shaped my literacy narrative. Many occurred when I was younger, although there are a few which happened have occurred over the last few years. Things These include such as the books I learned to read with, how my teachers taught writing skills and the availability prevalence of technology when you wanted itin my generation. These All played an active role in shaping my literacy narrativeabilities to read and write. My earliest memories of reading are books about machinery and how things in the world worked of some sort. Much like Sherman Alexie who learned to read with a Superman comic book (Sherman Alexie), I learned to read with books about airplanes and trucks. While kids children generally learn to read in school by first understanding individual words and then forming phrases and sentences, I was attracted to books with pictures of equipment and would pick it them up and just try to figure out what made sense in the context of the pictures. The more I read these books, the more interested I became in all the different types of vehicles which formed the basis for my passion now with such things. With Given that all of the my reading at that early age was I was doing being non-fiction I, I never really acquired a feelan interest for reading fictional stories. In this way Sherman Alexie and I are very different., As a kindergartner, he would read book such as The Grapes of Wrath that helped developed vivid imagination and a lifelong appeal for such stories. In comparison, as a freshman in college I still

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have no interest in any book of that genre. My decision to pursue Engineering certainly was influenced by these resultant interests and how they developed from an early age. With that being said, itMy early reading interests also influenced how I write. Having With a mostly nonfiction background, I am much better at technical writing rather than creative writing and this is very evident when reading my writingwhich is obviousapparent. In the novel The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk, Kidd Lily is a creative writer, a skill she developed and she learns this because that isof how she was raised, having to create her own stories for entertainment. In On the contrary, a similar fashion, I grew up not having to create stories to stay entertained. Rather I would simply read about things that already existed. The connection to be madeparallel here is that while we both have opposite writing styles, we both learned in a similar manner which was involved revolved around what we didour activities and environment as children. I often struggle with writing, although lately, I have been able to improve with a lot of practice. Often I find that making composing a draft and having someone review it during my rough copy phase helps me to improve better than just writing the document and then turning it in for then receiving feedback at a later time. When In school, I learned to write it was mostly through short chuncks which I now realize didnt really allow me to refine my skills and this has had cratedcreated a lasting effect on my writing. Today, computers arepose a mixed blessing the biggest threat to my writing as well since they provide sophisticated aids to spelling and grammar. Unlike in Lilys time when you would learn to spell because you didnt have a choiceby using a dictionary and thesaurus, today as long as you know what a word means you can generally write a story and the computer will help you choose the proper words. While technology can have an enormous significant effect on ones writing styleabilities, your social class also plays a large role in this. People who grow up in a lower classless fortunate house

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homes then they are more likely to be strong in creative writing. This can be seen when examining Lily, who was raised in a lower class house living with T Ray and Rosaleen. Another thing factor that which affects my writing versus the writing at of others is the writing process I use. Most I have learned that many people plan out their writing in an outline form which allows them to get allcapture their thoughts onto a single page and it allows them to better organize their thoughtsthem. I struggle with the outline approach and thus find it easier for me to free write. In this way I am similar to Lily. Most all of the writing she did was off from the top of her head mind and where as she thought about something, she would write it down. In Chapter Nine, when Lily and August go to visit Zach in jail, Lily tells Zach Ill write this all down for you. Ill put it in a story (Kidd 185). , Later, when she does write this it down, rather than she doesnt plan anything but rathershe she just sits down and starts begins writing. In a similar fashion, if Im going to write a non-technical paper, I usually dont attempt to plan its layout out ahead of time as I have found it to be rather ineffective for myself. Again, this has a lot to dois a result of with the way I was taught to write where . When I was taught I was never had challenged to plan out my writing. In the Malcom X reading he talks describes about being in jail and learning to write by transcribing the dictionary page by page. This affected contributed to himhim in that he became becoming exceptionally smart and literate. although Interestingly, his skills had little to it didnt have anything to do with the way he was taught, but rather everything to dowere heavily influenced by with the way he learned. There is a difference in beingTeaching taught and learning are very different. You One can be taught something by someone yet still have no understanding of the subject. You In contrast , when one can learning implies that someone has something, on the other hand, at which point nowthey you haves a pretty good understanding of

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the subject. Unlike myselfme, MalcomMalcolm X learned to read based on his writing. Spending so much time writing the dictionary he led him to became become very familiar with words which that many people may likely do not even know. This allowed himAs a result, he to bewas able to read much strongermore complex literature even despite though hebeing was in jail. In some way I wish I wasdesire to be able to read at such a high level. My literacy narrative is similar to Malcom Xs in that key event and circumstances in my life guided our learning styles and affected the overall ultimate outcome of how we read and write. Some of theOther events which affected my literacy narrative include moving from Texas to Maryland at a young age and, who my circle of friends are. , what the teachers I had and now even the what college that I chose. The move from Texas to Maryland when I was in elementary school,school had probably the largesta significant effect on my reading and writing because of the difference in teaching styles. In Texas, there was a lot of focus on both what you were doing as well as why you were doing it. In What I found in Maryland is that they would tell us to do something or read somethinggive us an assignment but not relate what it was going to mean or how it would affect us. That teaching style was hard forchallenging for me because I like to put things in context of know why Im doing something. By doing so, that I have moream better motivatedion to do the assignment and notwithout feeling like Im simply wasting my time. This The ripple really eaffected me becausewas that my grades started going down since I wasnt putting as much effort into the work. I struggled for a while to get out of the situation and I have since recovered for the most part. Much like Lily, my friends also had a very large impact on my literacy narrative and for the most part it has been in a very positive manner. They Working with them helped me a lot to understand things more of what I was reading and once I understood them I could which in turn, led me to do a much better job on the project or assignment.
Comment [JTR2]: I think you could leave this out Comment [JTR1]: You mention the teacher earlier and you don't mention the effect of the college at all so I would omit.

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Overall, dont have a lot ofI haveshare few similarities with the texts experiences of the characters in the books which that we read in class, but recognize comparisons between their learning experiences and my own and how each had an impact on the development of my reading and writing skills, otherwise known as our my literacy narrative.