Category Archives: Unit 1 Final Draft Literacy Narrative

Literacy Final Draft

Clifford Strunkey
Student
English D1211
February 21st, 2019

Defining Literacy as you understand it, and connecting it to experiences in your life as a Student or outside of school.

In my early childhood my understanding of literacy was the ability to read, write and comprehend my spoken language, which is English. As I grew older, I began to realize that reading, writing and comprehending, wasn’t the only parts to literacy. In today’s world, literacy includes the ability to understand numbers, images, computers and being able to communicate some form of basic different languages.
I woke up one morning in and ask myself what I am doing with my life. So on July 27, 1987 I decided to join the U.S Military, to be specific the Army. Three months later I was sent to Ft. Leonard wood Missouri for basic training. I and fourteen others left New York on a Friday afternoon, and arrived in Missouri that night. All of us were from different parts of the city. We were meet at the airport by three Sergeants, who were called drill Sergeants. They greeted us politely and loaded us on a bus. Three hours later we arrived on the base where we got a rude awakening. They started shouting and yelling, which caught us by surprise, and was the beginning of two Months of hell. Wake up was five every morning by noise of trash cans banging in our rooms, doors slamming, and yelling and screaming, wake up you aren’t in your mothers bed. Once we were up, we quickly formed up outside in a formation of platoons, to began our daily training. The first thing we would do is stretch, then warm-up, which was jogging in place. After completing those tasks, we would go on a three to four mile run, which usually ends in half hour of push-up, sit-up and jumping jacks. We would quickly head to our rooms to shower, shave and get dress in our military uniform, so we can go eat breakfast. Everything was done as company, which consists of four to five platoons. Usually about one hundred to a hundred and twenty five soldiers makes up a company. After breakfast we would head to our basic training site, an open area in the woods, about a mile away from our living quarters. This was our first time together; so learning how to march as a group was challenging. Being in step with each other was very complicated at first, but by the time graduation came you best believe we would have it down pack.
Training consists of learning a variety of different classes. In the medical field, how administer CPR, apply a field dressing and turning kits, caring a wounded soldier and how to stop someone from bleeding to death. On movement, navigate a map with a compass and a map, reading the information on a map and identify the features. I was also thought how to identify and shoot weapons with precise accuracy. By the time of graduation, I was mentally and physically tough to be called a soldier.
I was then sent to Ft. Lee, Virginia for my job training. Yes everyone in the military has a skill set, which they do every day once they get to their duty station. I became logistician, which is managing, accounting and verifying movements of equipment and soldiers. I wanted to be a manager so I had to educate myself at every level to get to the top. I also attended college while I was in the military, and receive my associate degree in Business Management and Accounting.
During my years in the Army, I attended numerous schools and programs that prepaid for me senior positions. There are many books related to military techniques and history that was part of my military role. This was the Army method of educating and teaching soldiers to become leaders.
I retired as a Master Sergeant after 31years of service, which is one step away from the top level, in the Non Commission Officer Chain. I accomplished going to college while I was in the military, and receiving my associate in Business Management and Accounting. I am currently continuing my education that will allow me the opportunity to grow personally and professionally as a person. Learning to read, write, speak, comprehend, and communicate, will help me to be relevant and proficient in today’s diverse modern world.
Growing up in the Caribbean where literacy is such an important factor from junior to high school, sets the precedents for me to understand that education was the key to my success in life.

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Alvaro Fuerte

Prof. Kim Liao

English 1121

February 14, 2019

 

 

 

 

I am no writer nor a reader, I certainly I am no skillful English speaker. I cannot talk much about the language other than my own experiences and what I did to learn it, how those things helped me shape a not so broken English.

I lived my entire life in Mexico, never really cared to learn another language whether it was English or any other. I always wanted to speak English just so that I could understand some of my favorite songs, movies or TV shows, but never really to be able to have a full conversation with someone. Although I wanted to learn I never did anything to really be able to do so. The only time I would anything related to language learning was in school and unfortunately it would not stick with me for very long.

When I first arrived to the U.S. I knew this was my chance to learn the language that I knew could open a lot of doors to my own good. My dad took me to the district where they tested my very poor English since all I knew how to say was the basic stuff, “Hello my name is Alvaro and I am from Mexico” or “I am fourth teen years old” and of course some colors and other simple phrases. The man who was with us did his best to understand my dad’s broken English, as well as he did to explain to me in Spanish what my situation was looking like and what were the high schools I had to check out and choose from, all international HS.

This high school was supposed to help me not only on my academics but it would do a lot more for my English, the problem was that being an international high school there were hundreds of Spanish speakers students. This made learning the language two times more difficult than it already is. How could I learn fast enough to understand what my teachers where saying? I remember my first day of school I got home from school and went directly to buy a small book. What for? If I did not understand most of the words on it. Well, I would read a phrase multiple times and see what words I could recognize or understand and then translate the rest of the words and try to put them all together as they did better sense. After, I would translate the entire phrase to double check, most of the time I was right.

Part of knowing a language is to being able to speak it and pronounce it as best you can. To help me with this part of the process I would pick very slow songs and do with the lyrics the same as I did with the book. Then, listen to the song for hours and carefully listen how the singer would pronounce the words and try to imitate them as best as I could. In school not only did I have to communicate with the school staff but I also had grades to take care of, therefore I had class work, homework, and other types of projects that needed to be done by someone who was just recently trying to learn the language.

Wrote down ideas in Spanish, put those ideas in a proper sentences, translate word by word, put the sentence together, and checked on the books to make sure it was somewhat consistent, that is how my freshman of high school year looked like. Of course the more I practiced and repeated this approach, the more my English improved, and even though at some point of the beginning of soft more year I did not need go through so much trouble to write a sentence I would still do it every once in a while just to double check.

Eleventh grade had come to haunt me, “This is the most important year of all four, and this is what colleges look to,” all of my teachers said. I wanted to improve my writing skills, and even though I was ahead of most of the class on writing, reading, and speaking I was completely terrified. As most of the kids on the U.S. I read the novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, novel about a young girl in 1936, telling different stories about the racial conflicts at the time and how it affected their lives. This novel hit me in the face when I least expected it, and in the way less wanting way, it made realize that I had to learn the different variations of English there is since throughout my journey of becoming the professional I aspire to be there will be uncountable occasions where I will not have all those easy texts I used in my starting years. With the help of my English teacher from back when I was in the ninth and tenth grade, I was able to understand what the book was trying to say, how people used to speak back then and how modern generations have manipulated words or phrases to use them in totally different contexts, and how can a word that was used a hundred years ago with a very disturbing meaning was now used in a daily basis.

Thanks to my teacher I was able to understand a little bit better how the English language works and how I has or can be manipulated. I am still learning this language, every day I learn something new about it, a new technique, a new word, or even a new form of writing it down, but it’s really refreshing that I will keep on adding to my knowledge to write down my way out of college.