Owen Hunt

Literacy Narrative Part 1

ENGL 1101

Literacy is an essential skill in life that everyone should poses, and the sad fact that 14% of America can not read (Illiteracy Statistics) at all really makes one think of how this country is going. As a student, it is hard to believe that if we go into the City of Charlotte that 14 out of every 100 people that we see cannot read a book. My whole life I have always been trying to become more literate. There is tons of information to learn from books and its disappointing to know that 14% of this world cannot experience the sense of power and state of grace that I receive when I read a book. As a kid, my vocabulary was obviously very limited. I felt embarrassed that I had so much difficultly telling my parents or grandparents what I had done that day or week. Fortunately they were very understanding and helpful with this problem of mine. Overtime I learned and developed ways to express my thoughts into words to these people. Until I came to this conclusion I remember being handed a book in kindergarten and told to sit outside the classroom and read the book. The thing was that I had not been taught to read at this point in my life. I remember just sitting there trying my very best to understand the words on each page. From this point on, I would just grab a book and attempt to read without any help from other people. I knew that learning to read and write is essential in this world. I especially remember taking a trip to Mississippi to see relatives and attempting to read The Ugly Duckling, the whole trip. I struggled

greatly, but I had a huge sense of accomplishment when I finished the final page even though I only understood half of what was going on within the book. After years of reading and writing I started to notice that the more I would read, the better I became with communicating with people my thoughts on subjects.

Owen Hunt

Literacy Narrative Part 1

ENGL 1101

As I grew older my literate skills began to improve by the choices of books that I read. My mom was always a huge help in the development of my literacy skills and is definitely my literacy sponsor. She is a librarian at her school and is the coach of this program called Battle of the Books. It is where students have to read books off a list of fiction books and then go to compete against other teams. They will be asked questions regarding specific events that took place in the book. I loved to read fiction books such as the Harry Potter or Percy Jackson series. Because I enjoyed reading these types of books so much, she made me a member of the Battle of the Books team at my middle school. I believe this decision on her part made a huge impact on my literacy skills as a middle school student. She did not want me to be reading fiction books all the time, so she would require me to read a nonfiction book from time to time, which I despised doing. She would push me to a great extent to finish all the books on the list before competition. All the reading I was doing start to get old and the fun of reading was sucked away. It was the 8th grade when I quit the team, and from that point on, reading just became a chore to me. So in my case, one could say that too much reading was bad. It took a long time for me to get over this hatred of reading any book, and every summer my parents required me to read one book of my choice and write a 500-word page paper on the book. In my junior year of high school I made attempts to read the books assigned to us, by listening to audiobooks downloaded from the Internet. I found after a few books that this idea did not do much to help in me actually retaining the information. By not retaining this information very well, my test grades were not as high as the students that read the books. My senior year of high school is when I realized that by actually reading the book it can help so much in the future. One book can be used as a

Owen Hunt

Literacy Narrative Part 1

ENGL 1101

reference throughout my life. For example, I was required to read the story of Uncle Tom, in my junior year, and at the time I did not think that this story would be used so much in later classes that I took. The other day in this particular class a reference was made to Uncle Tom and I could not remember what the story was about because I did not take the time to sit down and read the whole story. Now I wish I had taken the time to learn what the story was all about. In my senior year of high school, I realized that I needed to make a new resolution about why and how I read. There is so much knowledge to gain and I am not going to retain the information said in the book if I just read an online summary. I wish I had come to this conclusion a lot earlier in my education, my grades in all of my classes would have been higher and I would have a better understanding about the content taught in the subjects that I take. By solving this conflict in my literacy history I have made a huge impact on my ability to gain knowledge. I am happy that I finally resolved this conflict within myself after five years of hating any type of reading with a passion. I wish I would have come to the conclusion earlier, but it is good that it happened before I was enrolled in college. A student with an attitude of hatred about reading in college will definitely suffer on tests and quizzes. I went from a child that used to love to read books, to a teenager that hated everything to do with books, and now an adult that can tolerate any type of reading assigned and actually get enjoyment out of the ever so important knowledge that is held within the cover of books. After going through the educational experience up to high school I noticed a few flaws in the system that need to be improved. In all of my English classes, my teachers

Owen Hunt

Literacy Narrative Part 1

ENGL 1101

never explained the importance of a particular book, they just said read this, do this, and we will have a test on that. It became repetitive to follow the same process all throughout high school. Not once did I have an English teacher be different from the average. Every assignment was made out to be torture, no one explained to me the enjoyment of learning all this material, and I had to figure it out on my own. The educational system is made out for the masses of students. It is to ensure that at least 75 percent of a high school learns the knowledge required. The difference in high school and college is how the information is presented. High school teachers tend to follow the books verbatim, whereas college professors teach it the way they want to, but still involve the requirements in their teaching. English is one of the most difficult languages to learn, but to become good at speaking and understanding it one must read and write. In my opinion, the more one reads and writes the better they will become with the English language. As I grew up, I would have feelings of power every time I learned and understood new knowledge. Gaining knowledge has always given me a sense of power. A sense of accomplishment comes over me when I know that I am more intelligent than the person beside me on a specific subject. When I do not understand something or fail at something I have a feeling of great despair for an extended period of time.

Owen Hunt

Literacy Narrative Part 1

ENGL 1101

Citation Page Illiteracy Statistics. Statistic Brain RSS.N.p., 28 Apr. 2013. Web. 03 Sept. 2013.