My Literacy Narrative

To me being literate in reading is like a gift that keeps on giving. When you are able to read it opens up so many doors and lets you achieve so much more than you could without it. Reading and writing with phonetic characters is seen as one of the most important parts in the advancement of civilization. Reading allows for people to communicate and exchange ideas and information. These ideas or information can be kept and saved for hundreds and thousands of years. The further our society advances the more beneficial reading becomes because there is always more to learn. When someone is able to read it makes them distinguished. When someone is not able to read and they are above the age when reading is usually learned, they are looked down on. It means that they can only get so far in life because they will not be able to absorb information as easy or as fast as people that can. Reading can give people so much, and it is a gift that should be cherished.

There are many different symbols that play a part when it comes to reading. different languages and different cultures have different ways of writing these symbols, but they all are generally the same phonetically, meaning they sound the same when spoken. In the American culture we have the alphabet, which is all twenty six letters, numbers which can numerically describe any amount no matter how small or how big, and punctuation marks which help control the flow of how someone reads. For example, if. someone. writes. like. this. the. reader. will. interpret. the. section. as. very. choppy. and. slow. If someone writes normally with no punctuation marks it can be read very fast and very smoothly It is hard to continue to read like this because you have no idea where one idea stops and another starts. Proper use of these codes and symbols make reading easiest and clearest for the reader.

Literally, reading is the recognition of a group of symbols called letters that are put into sequence to form words. These words are formed into groups called sentences that when put together, if they all aim towards one idea, then they are called paragraphs, which can be put together to make a story. These stories are then passed down from generation to generation and carries knowledge about peoples past, and clues on how to handle things in the present. The information that can be absorbed by reading can be done in multiple ways, whether it be a story or an outline of how to perform a technical skill.

We live in a world where reading is the key to live the best life possible. We are taught from a young age that if you want to be president or if you want to be an astronaut or a king or anything, you just have to know how to read. When you are a child, most of the time you really do not want to read, or so was the case with me. I would want to watch tv, play outside, or play video games instead. If we can teach kids from a young age to want to read instead of doing other less beneficial things all the time, I think the world would be an even better place. If everyone could read and communicate better, then conflict would start to fade away. If every human being had the ability to read all the knowledge that is available to most people, the world would be better because people would start to get where other people were coming from, their background, and what they are trying to accomplish. Reading can make the world be the best place it can possibly be.

I really do think reading is very important to be successful in today's world. Reading allows us to communicate to people around the world. Reading allows us to look at information that people have left us thousands of years ago. One of the most important steps in the development of the human race is the ability to read. When the Phoenicians created their alphabet, world trade boomed. People were able to know what people they have never met or spoke a language they didn't know just because they could read a common alphabet.  The things that one person can accomplish with reading is absolutely astounding. The options are literally endless. I could not imagine life without it.

If i was not able to read, life would really be rough. Life today is heavily reliant on reading because reading allows for a person to become literate in so many other things. If it was not for reading it would hard to be literate in anything that someone did not physically teach me. Consequences of being able to read are all good. i have never had a bad experience after reading. Well, only if something is really really boring do i have a bad time reading. I am quite sure that if I did not read, I would have a life that is considered below average and would probably live under the poverty level. I would not be able to find a steady job, and instead I would have to work manual labor or something similar. When i think about what life without the ability to read, it makes me happy that I can in fact read.

Some people might wonder why we read. To me it seems pretty simple. We read to succeed. Ever since i have been a kid I've seen posters and designs talking about how readers are leaders and things like that. When looking back, it really seems true. If we were not able to read we wouldn't be able to get by in the modern world.If we could not read, how could we get a job? If we didn't read we would not be able to follow directions on the back of a box of mac and cheese. Being literate in reading is very important in today's day and age. We are constantly being tested on our reading literacy, and for good reason too. Reading does make you smart, and it does make you a winner. If i could not read, I would not be here writing this post today. I would probably living in a van down by the river.

You may have noticed a common theme, but reading is quite beneficial for people around the world. People can get jobs through their proficiency in reading information that is unique to a certain field. A person can leave knowledge to generations to come from the ability to read and write. I can write an email to someone in a far off country and if they can read it, we can communicate in the blink of an eye. The human race has been reading for centuries, and in periods of time where society was open to reading and readily accepted it, they went through a period of wealth. There was wealth of knowledge and monetary wealth all because society accepted and encouraged reading.

Nowadays it seems like I am chilling in the big leagues of reading. I am here in college and what do I do a bunch every single day? Read. My schedule might as well be wake up, read, chill, sleep. Then I repeat. I'm not complaining though. It is basically the first time that I am a part of a community where I am the average for reading abilities. Its kind of cool if you think about it though. Especially because now I have more than forty thousand people that can push me to get better at reading. All  my teachers stress the importance of reading the textbook on my own to stay up to date in the class. If it weren't for reading I am not sure college would be possible. Maybe that's the whole idea of it. Put a bunch of people that are quite knowledgeable and make them compete. There may be some losers coming out of it, but it does make the people that win the best that they can be. That's social Darwinism at its best.

It is one thing to be able to read. It is a whole different ball game to be able to read in front of a large group of people. During my senior year of high school I was chosen to lead a retreat called Kairos. It is a religious retreat that my high school is known for. Being a leader I had to give a talk. My talk was about fifteen pages single spaced all written by yours truly. It wasn't that hard to write and it wasn't hard to read, but because the content was so personal, it can be pretty difficult to read and present it to a group of your peers and teachers. It took about an hour and a half to read through and people seemed to get that it was tough, but I got through it and it ended up being really good. and nothing is better than having other people tell you how good you are at reading stuff.

When I got to high school I was a pretty good reader if I do say so myself. So when I took the entrance exam and took the placement tests, I thought I was going to do pretty well. And guess what? I did. I was placed in honors English because of my English and reading skills, and placed in honors Spanish because of my knowledge of reading. What was even better was when we had to readTheOutsiders. The teacher was saying how it was such a good book and all that jazz, and I was like hey, I have already read this because I am smart. When I said this the teacher seemed to be quite impressed. It was good to have the teacher really  like me in the first month of school because she was able to give me some leniency in other aspects of the class. I would be able to do speeches on Batman while other kids would have to do it on regular people and figures. It was pretty  nice to be  rewarded just for having read a book.

http://jonathanshipley.blogspot.com/2011/06/seven-tips-to-keep-kids-reading-this.html

http://wp.stockton.edu/collaborativestudentresearch/book-review/

In sixth grade I had the homeroom teacher Mrs. Zuske. She was the science teacher, and the other homeroom teacher, Mrs. Romanowski, was the English teacher. Even though Mrs. Z was not as trained in the literary arts, she was still a very influential person in my road to literacy. In our reading class every month, we had a figure that we got to decorate. To earn things to decorate with, we had to read books. Different levels of books would earn you more points than you would if you read an easy book. I wanted to be the first one to finish my figure, so I always would push myself and go for the harder books. Especially because one of my best friends at the time was just as good if not better than me at reading, so I had to try to beat him. If it wasn't for Mrs. Z, I would have probably ended up doing the minimum for reading during sixth grade, but because she gave me incentives, I was able to beat my friend and be seen as the best reader in the class. and being the best can really make a kid feel good.  

When I was in fifth and sixth grade I had the same English teacher. Her name was Mrs. Romanowski and she was one of the best English teachers that I have ever had. She had a system where if you got a detention or something like that, you would be able to serve that detention by reading a book. There was a time that I had a good bit of detentions to serve, so I decided to read Moby Dick. I was not too big on the non-transcendental writing style, but at the same time I liked the challenge. Mrs. Romanowski was a baller and is one of the few people that really got me to read during this time. I have never really seen someone so interested in getting some kids to read, and she really did make it fun. When she gave some perks to reading it made it more worth doing and more fun, which is pretty awesome. So thank you, Mrs. Romanowski.

I remember in first grade I really started to stand out in the reading world. I had started to read actual books and just about everyone else was starting to read the books I was reading a year ago.  It started to become a bigger deal if a kid was not reading now. I remember one day, my school had our parents take a couple hours off of work so they could come and see us all read in front of the class. I was one of the most literate kids in the class, so I was one of the first to read. Some of the other students and myself were so much better at reading than some of the other kids that we were told to go and sit by the kids that read after us so that we could help them if they did not know a word or got too nervous. It is crazy to think about what I was reading back then compared to what I can read now.

One of my first literacy sponsors would have to be my grandpa. I remember when I was just starting out with reading, my grandpa used to try to teach me to read as well. we had our own chair in the front room where we would practice. He used to read me books that were probably a little bit too hard for me at the time, but my grandpa would keep trying. Eventually, I  started to be able to make out bigger words. He would bring me books about a kid and his dog. I don't really remember their names, but it was definitely a step up from Spot and Sam. Then after my grandpa would have me on a book for a while, he would have me read it upside down. He would say that in the business world you'd have to be able to read from all angles. Now because of my grandpa, I can read from any vantage point, and progressed further in reading than I would on my own.