Brant 1 Matt Brant Professor Jan Rieman English 1101-010 February 19, 2013 Overall I would have to say

that I am quite pleased with my paper so far. Surprisingly I found it to be one of the easiest papers I have had to write, due to the fact that most of it was based upon my past experiences along with my personal opinions and thoughts on things. Once I started writing, everything just seemed to flow very smoothly with ease and all of my ideas came to me as I needed them. Another thing that I feel definitely helped make this paper go so smoothly is that before writing anything at all, I wrote down all of my ideas and memorable experiences that have had a big impact on my literacy and organized them by importance as well as by a chronological progression of events on a timeline. I would say that as with any paper, it is going to need some work touching up both major concerns such as content, as well as minor concerns like grammar, but for the most part, I feel rather good about the paper and am pleased with the outcome so far. The Story of My Lifes Stories There are numerous aspects of our lives that define who we are as individuals. Often in an academic or professional context, our literacy is the defining factor of our intellectual capabilities. Fair or not, society tends to be more accepting of individuals who are proficiently literate, while condemning or looking down upon those who are not. This being said, in order for an individual to succeed and move forward in their life, sufficient literacy is a key necessity to do so. Literacy from a general standpoint is engraved in our identity from the time we are born to the moment we die, continuously growing and developing throughout our entire life.

Brant 2 Over the course of my life thus far, my literacy has come an incredibly long way, with no end in sight as to what extent it may reach. It all started nearly fifteen years ago at the age of three when my grandma felt it to be crucially important for me to learn to read and write at least a little bit before I started school. Due to having both of my parents working during the weekdays, I often stayed with my grandparents during the week. Still to this day, my grandma is and always has been one of my biggest fans, and has always pushed me to succeed in everything I do in my life, supporting me every step of the way. Though at the time I didnt understand the importance of it, my grandma wanted to teach me how to write each and every letter of the alphabet in both upper and lowercase. In attempt to do so, she would sit down at the kitchen table with me after breakfast and show me how to correctly write each letter, one at a time. Being the wild little kid that I was, Im not exactly sure how she maintained the patience to practice this every day with me, but somehow she managed to do so. After a few weeks of doing this for approximately an hour each day, I had accomplished the goal and was able to write my entire alphabet without any problems. Now that I had become competent in writing my letters, my grandma sought to teach me how to combine the right letters of the alphabet and write my name correctly before I started pre-school. Again we worked on this task every morning for a few weeks until one day I had finally gotten it! Now looking back on it, that piece of paper with Matthew Ryan Brant written on it wasnt much of anything, but at the time, it was simply a work of art in my eyes. That Friday afternoon my mom came to pick me up after she had gotten off of work and I couldnt have been more excited to see her and share my news with her. As soon as she walked in the door, I ran up to her with that simplistic piece of paper in my hand to show her what I had done. When I showed it to her and saw how her face lit up with a big smile, I was undoubtedly the proudest kid in the world

Brant 3 of my accomplishment. Reflecting back upon this historical moment in my literacy development, I think that I was so proud of what I had done because my grandma had made such a big deal about it. At the time, I believe I saw it to be such a big deal because of the fact that I was actually able to do it all by myself without any assistance at all. Though it didnt really mean much to me at the time, my grandma had explained to me that by being able to write my alphabet and my name, I would be ahead of most of the other kids when I started school. She proceeded to explain that by being able to write and make words out of the letters I knew, it would make it much easier for me to learn to read because I would understand where the words came from. Being the curious little kid that I was, I of course wanted to know why I needed to know how to read and write, and why it was so important that I learned to do them. In much simpler terms so that I, being only three could understand, she essentially explained to me that being able to write would give me the ability to communicate with other people, and that being able to read would allow me to understand what others were attempting to communicate to me. It seemed to make pretty good sense to me at the time, so I went with it, and asked her to help me learn how to read now that I had learned a very basic beginning to writing words. Starting off with small books that contained mostly just pictures and a couple words on each page, we began practicing reading everyday just like we had done with writing my name. Once a few weeks of doing so had passed, I came across the book Goodnight Moon and fell in love with it. Im not exactly sure why it was that I came to love the book so much, because it was in fact a very simple book, but my favorite at the time none the less. I got to the

Brant 4 point that I could read the whole thing by myself flawlessly without even realizing what I had done. I liked the book so much that I didnt even realize that I had read the whole thing without any help the first time I did it. Just as with my writing, once I realized what I was able to do, I couldnt believe that I had actually done it! As Im looking back on this significant moment in my literacy history, I realize that my grandma is a huge reason that I am where I am today in my literacy. If it werent for her, I wouldnt have gotten a head start on things and could have possibly ended up struggling when I began school if I had to learn all of the basics of reading and writing all at once from scratch. But instead, I was able to excel in comparison to my classmates and I cannot stress how important that fact is due to the difference it has made in my literacy. When I was in second or third grade, my school still taught something that I feel to be without a doubt one of the most helpful and crucially important aspects of my literacy. This significant matter was that of learning to write in cursive, something that schools no longer teach, which I find to be ridiculous. I would argue that cursive writing is one aspect of literacy that everybody should have without question. When I learned cursive, I believe it may have been the last year that it was taught in schools, yet I am grateful that I was able to learn such a task. Take a second to think about something each and every person does in order to ensure their security when using a credit card, or giving approval of a written document or contract. The unique stamp of approval and security is their signature. Correct me if Im wrong but I do believe that when someone signs something or gives their signature, they generally sign their name in cursive. With schools no longer teaching cursive writing, how does the world expect people to sign things or provide their signature? Just as Crystal feared the death and disappearance of minority languages as a global language came about, the cursive writing style is slowly becoming obsolete as technology and basic print fonts are uprising.

Brant 5 In addition to learning to write in cursive in second or third grade, I also started really getting into reading chapter books. I had reached the level that I was competent enough in my reading skills that I no longer had to limit myself to short and simple books, but could now begin reading books that were much longer and had bigger plots with multiple stories going on at once. I remember around this time I discovered The Magic Tree House series, written by Mary Pope Osborne. These were chapter books about a brother and sister, Jack and Annie, who had a magic tree house that would take them to different places all over the world on a new adventure each time. I found that these books were really easy for me to read and continue reading because I was very adventurous myself, and loved anticipating what was going to happen next on their adventure as if I were actually there with them myself. At one point I believe I owned just about every single one of the books in the series and had read them all. Reading these books was a milestone in my literacy development due to not having read lengthy chapter books prior to reading this series. All throughout elementary school, we had the scholastic book fair come once or twice a year. I remember always going home with the catalog of what was going to be at the book fair and showing it to my parents after I had circled everything that I thought I would really like or that I wanted. As any kid would do, I picked out way too much and had to narrow down my choices quite a bit, but I still got to get some good books that I thought would be really interesting to me to read. In addition to the book fair, my school always had a thing twice a year where they would let each student pick out one brand new book to have for free. Though I dont remember the exact name they called this event, I do remember it quite well, because I always got there first and over the years, racked up on some pretty good books. Plus, they were free so who could complain! These semi-annual events my school held throughout elementary school

Brant 6 really stand out as aids to the development of my literacy because I had the opportunity to get a lot of new books, whether I purchased them or got them free either way. Having this opportunity allowed me to be able to read more and more, which enabled me to develop my literacy by being exposed to new words as well as new types of reading. Towards the end of elementary school and into middle school, I attempted numerous times to read the Harry Potter books. Despite my numerous attempts at doing so, I still to this day have yet to finish one all the way through. Comparing this experience to the one I had with the Magic Tree House books, I have found that my inability to finish them doesnt have much to do with their difficulty, but more so the actual story content of the books. Where the Magic Tree House books kept my interest with ease because of the adventurous aspect to them, the Harry Potter books were too slow developing and lost my interest early on. The lesson about my literacy that I have gained from this experience is that in order to read a book, it simply just has to be something that I find to be very interesting or I will give up on it and stop reading it. I believe this to be the case because I have always hated to be forced to read and would much rather read something that I find to be intriguing just for fun. Chances are, if Im reading, I am doing so for pleasure because I enjoy the book. From my experiences with other classmates throughout middle and high school, I have found that I am not the only one for which this is true. In general, people are much more likely to read things that they have a great interest in, and will more than likely view texts that bore them to be of lesser importance. This hypothesis is also proved to be true for me personally by a book I read in sixth grade for my social studies class. I tend to find war history to be interesting, and I especially have a deep interest in World War II. Although this book, Daniels Story was a book that I was required to read, I did so with pleasure because I found it to be both very informative and intriguing. Again following the principal that

Brant 7 I was definitely more prone to actually read it thoroughly rather than just skim through it or look up a summary of it online as I easily could have done. Romeo and Juliet is one of Shakespeares well known plays, and is traditionally read in ninth grade English classes. In the ninth grade in my English Honors class, my teacher Ms. Runkle made us read this play by Shakespeare aloud as a class dialogue, with a different person playing each of the different character roles. Due to the fact that we were reading it in class, I didnt see any real need to go ahead and read the scene that we would be covering in class the day before. It just so happened that I ended up being Romeo in class, one of the two key characters in the whole play. Reading it for the first time, I got lost and read the wrong part and had no emotion in my voice at all while doing so. My teacher called me out for not having read the part the night before to get familiar with it and be able to portray emotion where it was needed, even though I was most certainly not the only one who hadnt read it beforehand. Though she made an example out of me for not having done so, she wanted me to give it another try and be Romeo the next day as well. I managed to read the night before and did a really good job to her satisfaction. She made the comment that she also really liked my deep voice and because of that, she was making me play Romeo for the rest of the book. I wasnt exactly jumping up and down for joy over the result, but the whole situation did in fact teach me a good lesson. It taught me that in any situation it is always good to have a solid background as it pertains to whatever may be the topic of discussion. This experience also helped develop my literacy because by reading and knowing the situation and emotions present, I was successfully able to portray them as they should have been like it was actually happening. Of course the odds of a situation like such occurring on a regular basis arent very likely, but the fact of the matter is that it can pertain to more than just this specific situation. For example, in the business world,

Brant 8 chances are, you are going to have to deliver a presentation for some reason or another at some point in your career. If you prepare ahead of time and know all of the information that you plan to discuss and how you want to deliver it, you are much more likely so succeed in doing so in an effective manner rather than by just reading it off of the slide, which happens to be very distracting and takes away from the presentation, potentially resulting in the loss of a client. In Teaching Standard English: Whose Standard? by Linda Christensen, the realization that other cultures had different ways and styles of writing was exposed to me. Before I read the article, I hadnt given the idea much, if any thought before. I know that basic sentence structure varied from language to language or culture to culture because of my experiences in tenth and eleventh grade when I took both Spanish one and two. But besides this minute difference between those two languages, I didnt realize that much bigger things such as paragraph, much less the entire paper structures could differ so much from one language to another. I suppose this realization came as such a shock to me because English and Spanish are very similar in many ways and there arent very many significant differences between the structures. Though they may not be too awfully different in some ways, they can be vastly different in other ways. Taking the two Spanish courses that I did has developed my literacy even further due to the fact that I have learned part of another language that allows me to be able to communicate with people of other cultures, not just my own. Although I cannot fluently speak Spanish after only having two courses in it, I am able to read and write a good amount of the language and communicate with others in that way. After reading Daniels Story back in sixth grade, I had honestly not really willingly read anything that I enjoyed all throughout the remainder of middle school, nor through the first three years of high school. In the summer of 2011, before my senior year of high school, Courtney,

Brant 9 my girlfriend at the time gave me The Hunger Games to read at the ice cream store while I was bored at work. At first I was thinking to myself, yeah right Im not actually going to read this. Well I was very wrong about that, I picked it up one day while I didnt have any customers at the shop just to say I gave it a try, thinking I would get bored after the first few pages or chapter at the most. To my surprise, I was hooked almost instantly, I couldnt believe it. The book was incredible! I found myself having trouble putting it down when customers would come in wanting ice cream, I had never felt like that before while reading a book. Needless to say, the first book I ever bought myself was the second book to the series, Catching Fire. This was a big step forward for my in terms of my literacy because it had been five years since I had really read a book that I actually liked and found enjoyable to read. I feel like it was a great reassurance knowing that it was still possible for me to enjoy a book and find one that I really liked. Continuing to read books that you find enjoyable is something that I feel is crucially important to maintaining and further developing your literacy. One of the biggest problems with writing that I found I used to have was my use of commas. I would often use them in unneeded places, or leave them out when they were clearly needed. My misuse of commas wasnt done out of just not caring, yet I had just never really learned the correct rules of them and didnt know when or when not to use them. Last semester I began English 1101 with Dr. Branyon here at UNCC, but decided to drop the class halfway through it. While in his class, I finally discovered that what I had been doing was completely wrong, and was formally taught the rules of the correct use of commas. This was without question a huge advancement forward in my literacy because I was finally aware of the mistakes that I had been making prior to learning these rules. As a result of learning this, I was at last able

Brant 10 to fix the mistakes that I had made in using the commas in the wrong places or not using them where they should have been. Even still today my literacy continues to grow and develop as I proceed through school, right here in this class in fact. Only being five weeks into the semester so far, I have managed to learn about significant differences in literacy among other cultures, the idea of an emerging global language, and how to be a good reader and responder to my peer writers. My literacy is something that will remain with me and continue to always grow throughout every part of my life until the day I die, and it is one of the most important aspects about me that will essentially determine who I am viewed as by others in society.