Kevin Lerner
August 29, 2010
EDU 1000-05
My Literacy Narrative Experiences
A literacy narrative tells a story about our personal engagements with reading and writing. It
shows our ability to comprehend, think critically, and develop helpful reading strategies.
Reading illustrates the ability to comprehend any given text. Writing is the ability to
communicate or express what’s on someone’s mind. Those two factors are the keys to develop a
successful literate life. Everyone’s progression is learned at a diverse rate due to different
approaches and practices, but my literacy narrative has a story of its own.
As a young child I remember my grandfather reading Dr. Seuss “Green Eggs and Ham”
to me all the time. When he wasn’t occupied, I would always tell him to read that story to me
over and over again. I loved reading throughout the day and my top choice would be “one fish,
two fish, Red fish, and blue fish” by Dr. Seuss. My mother enjoyed the fact that I would come
home from school and be so anxious and excited to read. In school vocabulary wasn’t a tough
obstacle for me to overcome. My teacher approved of my pronunciation skills and told me to
keep up the good work, but when I was introduced to comprehension I knew that there was going
to be some technical difficulties.
Becoming a young adult brought a lot of attention to my reading issues. Pronunciation
was a positive reading achievement, while the negative factors were minor pauses throughout
reading selections. Soon I became less concerned with reading and it started to drift away from
being a habit, but I knew that had to change immediately. My attitude changed as I encountered
different reading and writing situations. I saw reading as a way of understanding, and writing as
an expression of myself. Diaries, music, poetry, and letters impacted my development because it
changed numerous vocabularies to improper words; I pronounced words differently and switched
up my variety of vocabulary words. Music played a big role in this issue because I would listen
to rap songs that involved slang and it would carry on in my everyday vocabulary use.
Through my struggles there have been few motivators and encouraging people that
helped me make it through. My teachers used to tell me “Kevin, if you’re having problems
comprehending, you should create a picture in your head while you read so that you will have an
image that reflects your reading”. Watching my older sister graduate gave me courage to get on
the same level she was on. Once I seen her getting the most attention from the family, it
encouraged me to become more like her or even do better than she did.
Despite coming across temporary literary issues, I have progressed and now view literacy
as an important characteristic in education. Literacy is extremely important. I believe every
individual should strive to obtain better reading, writing, and comprehending skills.
Understanding literacy has benefited me in many ways. I have developed in areas such as
comprehending and summarizing, which have enhanced my literary life. The significance of
comprehending is to perceive or understand any distributed information. Summarizing helps me
develop ideas to show that the information I read was understandable.
My conception of literacy has broadened and has enhanced my intelligence as an
individual. The main concept of literacy is demonstrated through critical thinking and reading.
Reading personal narratives, comprehending words in context, and reading against the grain have
shaped my conception of literacy. Revising sentences pertaining to grammar issues and improper
sentences in English class have impacted my literary life. After I finish writing a response to a
question, I revise my answer, identify the specific question asked, and provide details to support
my reasoning.
The articles that have impacted my view of the world today include “values, from the
audacity of hope” and “The amendments note”. “Values” was an intelligent article that made me
think of all my customs and beliefs and how a society views their amendments. Also, this article
portrayed Obama’s thoughts on values, self-reliance, independence, and the cooperation of the
civilization. “The amendments note” was an article that listed all the amendments from the U.S
constitution. Some of the amendments were unfamiliar to me, which increased my knowledge of
what citizens have the right to do.
My personal thoughts have changed towards how I view literacy at the end of this
semester. Now I see literacy as a way to apply knowledge in one area to another area as well.
Learning to effectively paraphrase information I have read taught me good interpersonal
communication. Understanding literacy means providing key points in a text, summarizing
information, reciting, understanding the point of views, and expressing your thoughts. If I could
do things differently I wouldn’t because I feel confident in the methods I learned, and the useful
steps that were provided for me to be a brilliant reader and an excellent writer. At the end of this
semester I have accomplished reading actively, vocabulary development through reading,
providing a powerful lead sentence, and the ability to recite what was read.
Literacy is important wherever you go. In life I would love to achieve being better
at reading and comprehending. Literacy really means a lot to me because it determines your
ability of understanding and comprehending well. Writing has changed my literacy for the better
by enhancing my neatness and understanding of what I’m writing about. All over the nation
literacy is being used to better everyone’s understanding of things either if it’s a job, reading a
book, looking at the news, or even playing video games. People should have a positive attitude
towards reading and writing because this could make or break you in the real world. Everyone
should strive to be a better reader.