My Experience On Literacy

For the first big writing assignment in English, we were asked to interview someone and talk about their literacies. My first thought was right along the lines of “what is the point of this”. I didn’t understand how learning about how someone else established their writing and reading habits would be beneficial to me and my habits. It wasn’t until I started interviewing my partner when I realized the purpose of this paper. My partner, Jenae, looked at literacy completely different than me. I was taught to read by my mother when I was 4 years old and was always told to read and write to better yourself. “Do it to better yourself.” This was my view on literacy until I met Jenae. During our interview, I asked her why she reads and writes. After …show more content…
She went on to tell me that she had obtained her literary knowledge from Meridian High School. “This was a very important time,” she stated, “I would have no useful understanding of literacy if it wasn’t for this school.” I found it interesting how such an inspiring ideal came from such a simple high school. After I thought the answer through, I concluded that it was not the actual school curriculum that gave her this knowledge, it was most likely a teacher or mentor that she looked up to. This made the most sense to tie together all of the information received throughout the interview. Mentors are a huge part of literacy and help you develop your skills. Like my mentor was my mother, Janae’s was an important teacher at her high school. I eventually found out that Janae’s high school mentor taught her a lot about other cultures and how their literacies correlate with ours. This played a large role in the decision making part of her literacy. Researching and studying another language was an effective decision for her because she could then completely understand the lesson taught by her mentor and interpret where it could take her in her life and her …show more content…
It made me wonder whether this study is accurate, now that I know a person whose negative literary experience negatively affected their literacy habits. I also wondered how Janae had snapped out of her negative state of mind towards literacy, back a positive motivated ideal. “Perseverance” was her one word answer to that question. She stated how after she had sulked about her bad review for a while, it was important to herself, and her future career to push aside the past heartache and move on to a new chapter of literacy. All of these things that Janae had experienced throughout her education really shaped the way she saw and reacted towards literacy. Unlike many of us, Janae was taught to take your literary tools and skills and put them to work helping someone else. This is what inspired me and made me understand the point of this assignment. It was to open up other literary doors and to expand your ideals and skills. Janae and her literary objectives helped me reshape how I look at my own literacy