The Development Of My Literacy Skills

Literacy development is something which starts in growing stages and takes years to develop reading and writing skills. Just like it takes years for a mathematician to increase his problem-solving skills, it takes several years for an individual to develop his/her literacy skills because this process does not complete with the input of only one individual and factor.

I remember when I was in elementary school, I used to be seated in my sister’s class instead of mine. I used to play with my sister with pencils. In the mean-time my sister’s English professor arrived and started to scold my sister because of I and I started to cry because I was upset. For few days I was not able to attend my classes. From that point of time, I had a bad impression towards English teachers and I never focused on English courses.

I still remember when I was in grade eight, I found professor Som who changed my impression towards English teachers and English subject. I was first introduced to the word ‘theses’ from him and as I wanted to be a computer scientist from my formative stage, he made me aware about the importance of theses in senior year of bachelor’s studies. He taught me various topics in English including subject-verb agreement, use of punctuations, reading and writing skills because I had a poor command over language at that time. He suggested me to increase my vocabulary power and he gifted me a book named “Word Power Made Easy”. I returned to my home with strong motivation and I started to study the book but after fifteen minutes of study, I was frustrated because I could not grasp anything from the book. I recall how he sends me to the children’s fiction section in library the next day, and encouraged me to read in an analytical manner, paying close attention to ensure that I was capable of grasping the information as well as the varied details. In addition to these, he also encouraged me to read science as it was instrumental in imparting comprehensive reading skills, especially when it came to analytical work. Personally, I think that this experience, as well as several encounters with my teacher in the library, shaped my literacy, and as such, played a huge role in ensuring that I furnished my grammar and analytical skills from my very young age. He would also encourage me to borrow books from the library, and then emphasize that I read them during my free time. This was coupled with the fact that he would at times ask me random questions from the books I had read. It was like he had read them all. This was a great shape to my literacy, analytical as well as comprehension skills in my early life. The day to day activities made me so strong that I was able to solve the difficult questions of grammar and punctuations. I learned the literacy skills including vocabulary skills, comprehension, print motivation, print awareness, narrative skills, letter knowledge, a phonological awareness which made me a complete package of English language knowledge. After few days I gave my final exam and I was a topper from that school. My score in English was 93/100. My family members were very happy by seeing my progress in all subjects. It was the first time I realized the taste of hard work and I never looked back and started to increase my writing and reading skills.

Another influence in my literacy was the KAPLAN SAT preparation book. After my high school diploma in Nepal, I wanted to come to the US for my bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, so I had to do SAT for scholarships and admissions in US universities. I was very good in mathematics and I had very good vocabulary and grammatical skills, so I was pretty sure I could ace the SAT test but when I was introduced to the KAPLAN SAT preparation book from my friend I came to know that I was wrong. I had to learn lot more in Reading and Writing so I started to study KAPLAN SAT preparation book. This book helped me to learn more about persuasive essays and it helped me to analyze comprehensive reading quickly. It also helped me to improve my writing skills using punctuations, subject-verb agreement and finally I was able to get ninety-two percentile score in SAT.

Also, my literacy was also shaped by the encounter with novels like “Harry Potter” and “Sherlock Holmes”. The series of nine fantasy novels published by J. K Rowling helped me to know about more words and it increased my vocabulary power.

I have always been attracted to computer science and mathematics. I always love to talk about computer science and mathematics in front of my friends, family, and teachers. I knew many things about different topics in computer science and mathematics like machine learning, abstract algebra, real analysis, artificial intelligence, computer networking and architecture, software development, actuarial science, but I also had love towards writing so I started to write on papers about these amazing fields, how these things have brought advancement in our world, what consequences can artificial intelligence create in our society and modern world, how a student can increase his problem-solving skills. These things helped me a lot to express my knowledge through writing and I won many writing competitions in class eleven and it always motivates me to continue writing and research on various topics which will bring advancement to our society in near future.

When I was faced with reading and writing for the first time, it was too difficult to understand the content of the essay. There are so many tiny details that we need to consider before writing anything. Grammatical structure, sentence structure, and vocabulary are important things that make writing and reading easy. In the beginning, it took quite a long time for me to understand all these things, but, after some hard work I could understand reading contents, and could write about various topics like machine learning, artificial intelligence, literacy narratives. Writing is a medium of expressing your opinions, thoughts, imaginations, and creativities to the reader. You can tell the readers, what you feel about the particular subject matter. These are correlated with each other because good writing makes reading more understandable. Reading opens the world to you; it will increase your level of knowledge and sensitivity about critical topics. It makes you mature, educated, and well disciplined; it is not necessary that you need a degree to show that you are well educated. Good reading skills help to gain all these benefits. So, this is how my attitudes or perspectives developed towards writing and reading.