Cheikhali 1 Ibrahim Cheikhali Miss E.

ENGL 1101-017 24 September 2013 The Extra Push: A Personal Literacy Narrative You will never know your ability to read or write until you try. From the beginning of my educational experience I viewed myself as a deficient writer. My reading abilities were much more superior. But the major problem was I never really tried to improve my writing abilities, until a teacher would push me through my mental barrier I had in place for myself. Practice ultimately leads to perfection many teachers, coaches and etc.. would say. It all began being raised into a household that specifically spoke Arabic. My first language was Arabic. My parents werent as fluent in English. My English abilities were acquired from a mixture of TV shows and school. I started school out in an ESOL class, which offered young kids the opportunity to excel and become more fluent in speech and use of vocabulary. This class greatly enhanced my ability to speak effectively and fluently. Great job guys! ,Practice makes perfection! were Mrs. Otts, the ESOL instructor, way of giving the students the motivation they were looking for. Im not going to lie, such motivation made me work persistently to become much more fluent. But I didnt apply such motivation to improve my writing skills because I did not enjoy writing due to the necessity of coherent paragraphs and my frail knowledge of grammar. The only effort my pencil made was doodling and scribbling odd shapes during a boring class. I decided to take the easy route in my writing experiences throughout elementary and middle school, which did not provide an effective strategy in improving my writing abilities. I always completed the bare minimum in writing assignments.

Cheikhali 2 There was always a factor that pushed me toward improving my reading or writing. I began to read more during the summer of my 6th grade year. The factor that pushed me toward reading more was a war in Lebanon in 2006, where most of my family lived. I specifically began to read news articles. I remember watching the news with my dad and reading the news headlines Crisis in Lebanon, Israeli F-16s bomb. and so on. I was worried for my family, due to the constant bombing of densely populated civilian regions, so I decided to do my own research online on what was happening in Lebanon. It broke my heart reading the newspaper articles that described the deaths of so many innocent children and women. I was very scared that one of the missiles would hit a building my relatives were living in. They lived very close to previous bombings. That propelled me to begin reading more, mainly articles about the news or the economy. Fear for my relatives situation was the extra push. That is the reason for my wide range of knowledge about the world and its issues. Due to the war in Lebanon I am much more interested in politics and the world wars that are going on. My vocabulary has vastly expanded in terms of politics and the economy. The extra push is all you need. My writing abilities began to improve while in high school. The bare minimum wasnt enough to pass. So I had to improve my writing skills. My junior year was the point where my writing abilities vastly improved. My AP English Language and Composition teacher, Mrs. Culclasure, was the extra push. My first day of class in AP English began with Mrs. Culclasure saying, All we will be doing this year is writing, writing, and writing! Her words were ringing in my ears throughout the whole school day. I thought of dropping the AP class and taking the Honors level course. I did not enjoy writing, but I stayed and it payed off. She was a serious teacher she meant business. We were assigned a writing assignment almost weekly to help us prepare for the SAT. My writing skills improved little by little after every writing assignment

Cheikhali 3 completed. She edited my essays and explained to me my mistakes and how I could solve them, which lead to my improvement. I would have to say that I am the writer who I am today because of Mrs. Culclasure. As Dalai Lama, a spiritual Buddhist leader of Tibet, once said, In the practice of tolerance, one's enemy is the best teacher. I didnt like Mrs. Culclusare in the beginning due to her seriousness and her extremely difficult writing assignments, but I tremendously benefited from them. Some would say my parents were the reason why I started off the writer I was, but I wouldnt put so much of the blame on them. It was I who didnt work hard enough to achieve a much greater literacy in writing. Practice lead to my improvement not perfection. No one is perfect; there is always space to improve. I still have much time ahead of me to improve in my writing and reading throughout my college career. Its always that extra push.