My Literacy Autobiography

My experiences with writing have always been not so…pleasant but it is not like I totally push it aside and disregard it. It’s true that if I could avoid writing, then I definitely would, but like how the old saying goes, you can’t hide from your fears forever. As I grow older and receive more writing assignments, I have learned to embrace it and cherish it since it is preparing me for the real world.

                My characteristic of being indecisive can be seen in my paper because I never seem to really take a stand in my essays but through writing more and more essays I will get better and find it easier to voice my opinion. The ability to voice my opinion through paper means that I can potentially voice my opinion verbally rather than following the crowd and never being the leader. I can finally achieve the purpose that I want to fulfill in my lifetime; to make my life meaningful.

                Reading and writing go hand in hand in society; you can’t have one without the other, but reading will always be my ultimate bias. What’s there not to love about reading and engrossing oneself in the storyline?

I believe that reading serves the purpose of providing a gateway to a more imaginative world where people can forget current societal matters or even personal problems.  The image portrayed by the eloquently connected phrases and sentences gives the readers the opportunity to be a part of the story and “be” the character. Along with reading, there is also writing which is equally as important.  Writing is a complicated but at the same time fascinating.  It enables people to write about any creative subject they can think about without being restricted, but here comes the hard part, correct grammar usage and punctuation, which are essential to an excellent essay. Personally, I would much prefer to experience the comforts of reading than dwell in the uncertainties in writing.

I remember the first books I read were those little cardboard books that taught little kids the alphabet. A is for apple and B is for bee, etc. and the books would always include pictures which I will absolutely adore! It always made learning more interesting and fun because instead of learning the alphabet on a plain blackboard, the experience was much more colorful and enjoyable. As I grew up, I would always read those princess fairytale stories as bedtime stories and to this day, I still have a soft spot for fictions. I use to love pretending to be the princesses in the stories and believe that my prince charming would come and bring me to a magic castle in the sky. I know it’s childish, but hey, I was only a kid during that time. Nowadays I don’t dream about being a princess but reading novels enable me to be someone I’m not and to live a different kind of life. Sometimes I get too immerse into the book and I like to change the scenario of a particular scene or even think of different solutions to solve a character’s dilemma. Then get angry if the character uses a different method that failed, when clearly my way will definitely work.

 As I entered elementary school and middle school the amount of books that we had to read increased dramatically, but it didn’t bother me. Whenever we received any reading assignments and the teacher would only assign 10 pages for homework, I would normally finish the entire book on the same day. Reading is more preferable for me because compared to writing, reading requires less of a thought process, unless you’re analyzing a passage but overall it’s a leisure-filled process. Writing requires one to create an outline, form an introduction and conclusion, and think of a well thought out body paragraphs. Reading relaxes me whereas writing keeps me on the edge because I never know where to start my essays or what to include in it. I would rather have ten reading assignments then receive one writing assignment. Possibly, my distaste for writing assignments hindered my progression of my writing skills because throughout my years of schooling I would always encounter the same grammar difficulties, the wrong tense of a verb, run on sentences, and so on. It was difficult to convey the ideas to my readers in an efficient manner without being redundant. To write something is not necessarily hard but to write a good essay is what causes the most problems. I shouldn’t be too harsh on Writing because there were a few assignments that I liked that involved writing, well, creative writing that is. In ninth grade, my English teacher gave us a poetry projects that counted for half our grade for the fourth quarter. I had to write poems that described myself, my family, newspaper articles, in addition to writing cinquains and my all time favorite, haikus. The whole 5-7-5 syllable rule seems to restrict what people can write but, to me, it’s like a challenge. Haikus can be written anywhere and that’s the charm of it. I can be on the train and suddenly I feel like composing one, I would count each syllable with my fingers to make sure I don’t go over. This may look weird to someone watching me, a girl counting her fingers over and over again, but I just might be creating the haiku that will go down in all the literature textbooks in the world.

A particular writing assignment that struck a chord with me and made me realize that writing is not my field of expertise was a paper that my eighth grade teacher assigned. I forgot the topic of the paper but what I will always remember are the page filled corrections made by the teacher and my horrible grade. I did badly on previous writing assignments too but this assignment just bothered me to the extent of me thinking about it all day. My English teacher wanted to have a chat with me because she wanted to know the underlying reason for my poor score. She asked me questions like, “What language does your family speak at home?” or “Are your parents immigrants?” To be honest, I was a little taken back by those questions at that age because I never thought that my parents being immigrants or Chinese being the dominated language spoken at home will ever affect how well or poorly I did in school. I started to feel as if I was below the other students in my class and my English standards were low even though I was born in America. During that time, I really wished for different parents that could speak English just so that I can live a more “normal” life. I started to blame my parents for the cause of my poor essay grades instead of setting goals to improve my writing skills. Of course nowadays, I respect and admire my parents for their hard work ethic and perseverance in living in the United States. Residing in a totally different environment from their hometown and surrounded by a completely different language.

In middle school, all the students are required to take a foreign language class and I chose Spanish. In addition to Spanish class, my mom also enrolled me in a class which taught me Mandarin. So at that time, I was speaking four languages; Cantonese at home, Mandarin at my Chinese school, Spanish and English at school. All these language courses required the students to read passages in the respective languages and write essays or short responses. Reading in those languages was simple to me, for example, I could pick up a Chinese newspaper and understand the general meaning of it. As for Spanish, I did better in reading comprehension then the essay portions of tests. Even in other languages besides English, I had trouble with writing, and points were mostly deducted from the grammar mistakes and wrong sentence structures. But as I read more and more literatures, the improvements in my writing were prominent. Another reason to love Reading is that it’s necessary for the foundation of excellent essay writing; I can learn grammar and how to flow sentences better by reading constantly. As I grow older, the texts that I read will significantly be more challenging and in-depth so I can improve in my reading skills, while at the same time, notably developing useful writing skills.

Literacy is a form of self-expression that enables people to show more of the kind of person they are. The type of books they read and the essays that they write show an inner them and a more true self. People don’t need to hide themselves in writing and be someone they’re not. It’s true that writing is something I don’t really favor but I have to admit that it relieves the stress and unhappiness bottled in me. Whenever I’m feeling down and have so much to rant about, I just take out a piece of loose-leaf paper and write it all out and then rip the paper into pieces. Now as a college student, I feel like I have an obligation to better my writing skills and improve. I can’t run away from my mistakes anymore like in high school because college is where all my past efforts in schooling are going to be shown. Furthermore, I want to become a successful pharmacist and writing is going to be a major component of my job. Reading and writing are essentials in the world today and I am ready to better my literacy skills.

At the bottom of the page I put a picture of Little Red Riding Hood because I want to emphsize the importance of children books in my childhood and I'm sure in many others too. I remember that I use to always look foward to coming home and start reading these fictional stories right away. These fairytale books were a source of entertainment but it also served the purpose of bettering my English skills. Seeing the picture of the familiar fairy tale gives me somewhat of a nostalgic feeling because it has been a while since I have not been reading any books lately, not to mention fairy tales. I really want to go back to the days when I had all the time in the world to read whatever stories I want and enjoy my quiet reading time.