Category: Unit 1 (Page 1 of 10)

I’m not the type of person who puts their work on display, I usually just show a teacher my work and wait for comments and make the changes that can improve my writing. But if I’m putting my work on display, people’s comments will help me improve my writing and become a better writer. In my literary narrative, I talked about my experience with writing and reading and where my literacy journey took me. When it came to came to reading I was surprisingly good at reading and pronouncing difficult words in a text or spelling them out. But I don’t think we can all relate to that, funny thing would be that when I was younger I thought of it as a talent. But when it came to writing, typing was the easiest thing but handwriting essays was difficult, not because of how to spell words but because of how my handwriting was. Sure it improved over time but it can still be improved on and I can start to learn how to write in script. But the point is, that I found some struggles with writing, and up to now, I’ve tried to improve on it and I still am.

In life, you come across a lot of people that play a role in your academics. Mothers, fathers, aunties, uncles, teachers, etc. Your parents as well as mine introduced you to the alphabet when you were a newborn. Using YouTube videos, alphabet mats, or even children’s cartoons. I would consider that the first stepping block to learning how to read or write. As a child, I grew up watching a lot of shows that introduced me to the alphabet, numbers, shapes, colors, and sentences. Over time you get familiar with simple sentences by repeatedly watching these shows. I’ve always been a visual learner. So watching my teacher Ms.Gittens write on the dry erase board was a solid factor in my childhood. As she wrote on the board, she would sound out the word super slow for everybody in the class. Another person that played a part in me learning how to define words is my aunt Tania. Tania is the first person in my family that helped me define words. Before her, I never knew how to use the dictionary. I always found the easy way out and googled what words meant. Thankfully she did not allow that to happen. She handed me a dictionary and explained every step in full detail. She gave me random words to find on my own to ensure that I understood. Lastly, there was my father. Even though this has nothing to do with English, my father taught me mathematics. He bought me dry erase boards, markers, graphs, and charts. Anything that could possibly help me, he bought, He would pick me up from school and devote time to my math assignments, He would pick my brain to make sure I am thinking logically. He would make me explain to him and show him how I reached my answer and correct me after if I was wrong. Special thanks to everybody involved.

Coming from a third-world country, growing up was difficult. Immigrant parents don’t have the greatest tendency to show support in pleasant ways. So having a language other than English as my native tongue, definitely created many hardships during the learning uprising. But thankfully there are many programs for foreign students to help with the learning curve. While I was growing up I was in ESL until 5th grade I believe. But from my personal knowledge, I believe I was fluent since 3rd grade.
Also, my lack of English comprehension put me in some uncomfortable situations. For example during 1st grade, there was a teacher who lightly tapped me with a ruler on the shoulder. But during 3rd grade, my principal called me and asked me if I was ever hit by a teacher. And me not really understanding that he meant actual physical abuse, I said yes regarding the teacher from 1st grade. Later on come to find out, because of the allegation I made, the teacher was fired. This whole situation escalated to me having a very awkward encounter with the teacher I “accused” of hitting me. This isn’t even the start to my lack of comprehension getting me into bad or awkward situations.