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Jacob McNeely Raymond English 1103 27 august 2013 Literary Narrative Thanks to the people around me I had a solid foundation to build my literary narrative off of. Both of my parents read to me almost every night when I was a small child. My favorite book was Cars and Trucks and Things That Go. I heard it so much I knew every line even before I could read them myself. My Grandparents on my moms side also read to me every night I spent the night there. All the stories I heard intrigued me and I was fascinated with the fact that in any story anything you could possibly fabricate with your mind was possible. Dorothy
Strickland and Shannon Riley-Ayers from

Readingrockets.org agree that a childs beginning years

have a large impact on the rest of their literary narrative. My parents were also the ones who taught me my alphabet at the early age of 3 years old. I couldnt do much with my alphabet till I was about 5 years old in kindergarten. There I learned phonics and how the letters worked together to make words and then how they were crafted with each other to make coherent sentences. I still remember the constant drilling of the sounds and shapes of each individual letter in order and I think the foundation given to me then and even before that was very incredibly important.

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A couple years later my mother took a librarian position at the elementary school I attended and while she had always been a fan of me and my sister reading she pushed us even harder now that she had thousands of books at her disposal. I learned a lot from my readings and it helped me learn how to pronounce words. My grandparents also bought me several subscriptions to a couple magazines I enjoyed reading from a young age on. Unfortunately school ruined this love of reading for me after giving me assigned reading after assigned reading that I loathed. In middle school my teachers would just assign a genre and I could pick my own book and I loved that system but when I migrated into the public school system I started to get assigned specific books and I would go home and want to do terrible things because these books were so bad in my opinion. I took about a six year break until last year to pick up a book by myself.

Most males from where Im from dont read more than a hunting magazine , the newspaper, or the Bible. I come from a traditional rural country background in a community that is slowly expanding into a more modern community. These beliefs are still passed down so its uncool to read in many s people. I am glad to see that the times are changing in the community in this regard because being literate is becoming more common and the more literate a person is the more intelligent they appear in a lot of cases. I do believe that someones socioeconomic situation can have an impact on their literary narrative. Personally I came from a higher up family so I went to the best private school near my house and it really put me ahead of the people around me when I went into public high

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school. Even the kids that were better off than others had a better chance at being at the top of the class at my school because of how they valued their education and because their parents pushed them to earn better grades. I noticed that also in public school the families with a lower financial status usually placed a lower value on their education in many cases and didnt make the most of what they had in front of them and didnt challenge themselves. Also their parents didnt push them to do well in school and motivate them so they did whatever they wanted. A study done by futureofchildren.org confirmed this belief. The higher the economic status of the family the less likely the student was to be held back a grade and received better test scores than students who were not as financially fortunate as them. Race while is unimportant to me and does not classify someone to certain behaviors some tendencies seem to form around certain races causing stereotypes. The African Americans and Latino groups of people at my last school seemed to have a reduced performance in school academics. The school only had one African American qualify for Beta club and only a handful made the AB honor roll. Latinos were in a similar situation with only a select handful of students qualifying for academic awards. Very few minorities were near the top of the class and they didnt challenge themselves to their full potential. Something that has recently amazed me thanks to this project is how many of my friends from high school shared a similar literary narrative as me. Many of my other friends had early reading interest growing up and we took similar classes in high school. It truly is amazing how your interests can flow into so many areas with other people without even trying or realizing it.

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Technology has also had a significant impact on my literary narrative. I would say the most influential piece of technology would be my cell phone. I use it all day every day for a multitude of things, from texting to browsing the internet to using social networking sites. This keeps me informed, but at a cost. I have become a lazy speller and writing formal works has become much harder because I have to change my thought process. It is also very beneficial because with this technology a lot can be accomplished in a short amount of time when used correctly. If misused it becomes a distraction and keeps you from your work. Not to mention the added danger they cause on the road from texting and driving. Heather A. Fischer, Kimberly A. Holentunder, Abigail L. Lemanski, Mario E. Morelli from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater agree with me that there positives and negatives to cell phones in there document The Negative Aspects of Cell Phones: Interpersonal Communication, Effects on Youth & Academics, Health Risks, and Driving Distractions.

Dorothy Strickland and Shannon Riley-Ayers. Readingrocket.org. 03 October 2010. Web. 18 September 2013. Celina Elena Rouse. futureofchildren.org. Princeton University. Fall 2006. web. 18 September 2013. Heather A. Fischer, Kimberly A. Holentunder, Abigail L. Lemanski, Mario E. Morelli. The Negative Aspects of Cell Phones: Interpersonal Communication, Effects on Youth & Academics, Health Risks, and Driving Distractions. Web. 18 September 2013.