Daria Mosley
Have you ever been given a difficult writing topic and thought to yourself “How am I going to write this paper?” Well that’s my life in a nutshell as a college student enrolled in English 151. January 26, 2017 my English professor; Allison Licastro assigned my class the task of writing a personal narrative of how we all learned how to read and write. Sounds broad right? My first response was a little sarcastic because it’s obvious everyone learns to read and write naturally just like how we’ve learned our first language. However, thinking deeper that’s not how I learned to read and write, yeah I knew a lot of words when I was a child but that doesn’t mean I knew how to spell them or even how I broaden my vocabulary. Throughout my journey many people, classes and internet sources have played a role into my academic success. Surprisingly as most would think my journey started in Kindergarten.
At the age of five I attended Abundant Life Academy, located in Syracuse New York. If you assumed it is a Christian school, your right, yet I have no memory of learning anything related to the bible. To me, the school seemed more similar to a public school because I had one teacher who taught basic subjects like English and Math, and in between we’d have snack time, nap-time and show-n-tell. Nevertheless, going back to the matter of learning how to read and write my teacher, Mrs. Suzie did indeed teach me. My class was a pretty small size, I’d say there were about fifteen of us and all our desk were divided in rows. Mrs. Suzie’s desk was located in the back, but she always positioned a chair in front of the class when she taught. During English, she would write one syllable words on flash cards and together the class would repeat the term aloud. I clearly recall learning the words my, me, day, be and to. She taught us how to say them and how to properly use them in a sentence. Later came the two syllable words such as, Monday, seven, picture, music and apple. She taught us two syllable words visually by giving us pictures of the word and we would have to write and spell the word under the picture. I feel that method was very effective because not only did I know how to spell and pronounce the word, now I also knew what adults were referring to when the words were said. I must admit Abundant Life Academy was an impressive school. Not only did we learn how to read and write sentences, we also learned how to write in cursive. I always had seen cursive around the house for instance, letters on the kitchen table, papers on my Dad’s night stand and sticky notes on the refrigerator. Although, I seen it everywhere I never understood what was actually written, so I just figured it was some weird kind of adult language. All students were given a blue book that was devoted to cursive. The beginning consisted of writing out the alphabet from lowercase to uppercase letters then came writing basic sentences like “The dog is brown.” My cursive was not in any way the neatest especially the letters S and Z but after Kindergarten I never had to write in cursive again. Until this assignment I never realized how beneficial Kindergarten actually was for my reading and writing journey. However, after reading book Tyrell by Coe Booth the way I viewed literature changed forever.
Throughout elementary and middle school I was an active reader. I loved books from Roald Dahl and Judy Blume in fact, Are you there god? Its me, Margaret. was one of my favorite books for a long time. Every night I dedicated at least an hour or two, to reading chapter books. Plus they would help me fall asleep. Every book I read had a similar storyline. Either the character was going on a quest where at the end he or she would have learned a lesson, or the character was a female who would soon find a love interest and from there a story would form. After reading mostly every book of my shelf I relocated to where my mom kept her books. She suggested the book Tyrell was a good read, but after looking at the cover I felt a little intimidated because for once the character on the front was not animated. Despite the appearance of the book, the summary on the back seemed interesting so I decided to give it a try. The first line of chapter one was “When I pick Novisha up from school, she actin’ all weird and shit” I couldn’t believe what I was reading. Not only did the character curse, but he used slang that I used too. Also Tyrell main goal was to provide for his brother because his mother was in and out of their lives. The book’s language was so current that I didn’t even feel like I was reading a book, more like I was there. I couldn’t put the book down, I finished all 307 pages in three days. It never occurred to me that authors could express sexual events and inappropriate words in literature until I read that book. I was always under the impression stories had to be appropriate so everyone could enjoy. Now knowing that writing didn’t have to be relatable or suitable to everyone I was open to reading more controversial stories that could change my way of thinking and writing.
Finally, I want to fast forward to my freshman year of college to explain how public speaking reinforced the way I wrote. I know what you’re thinking, “how could public speaking possibly strengthen my writing” well behind every good speaker is a great writer. In this class we had to do an informative speech, argumentative speech, commemorative speech, a debate and an inspirational speech. The first rule my professor John Castagna taught me was to write a speech that my audience would relate to, so my informative speech focused on the importance of sleep for college students. I informed them how a lack of sleep could impact their lives, socially, mentally and physically. I even gave my class advice on how to improve their sleeping habits. In addition, I learned how to write attention grabbers in the introduction and depending on the topic I needed to establish credibility immediately. The class taught me how to make my writing conversational so the students would not feel obligated to listen to me, but they would gain knowledge every time I spoke. Also, I learned how to deliver a message persuasively by using expert opinions, comparisons and considering the opposed point of view, then giving an alternative. Public speaking molded me to keep in mind why should the audience care. What’s the point of telling a story or relying a message that the audience will not remember? So now, I try to write in a way that’s memorable and to choose topics I am most passionate about to I can display that energy in my writing.
All in all, this assignment wasn’t as hard as I thought. Many other sources contributed to my reading and writing skills such as, dictionary.com, TED.com, Web articles and critics from previous English teachers. Ultimately, I feel Kindergarten provided me with basic knowledge, Tyrell allowed me to view literature with a different perspective and public speaking influenced me to write with a purpose. Considering I am only a freshman, I have much room for improvement, so I’m hoping taking this English course will enhance my critical thinking and polish my writing.