Ashton Crabtree Emilia Fuentes English 1101-9 18 September 2013 Literacy Memoir Have you ever been sitting

in your English class during a group discussion about a book you had to read or an essay you had to analyze and been completely confused and lost? That is how I felt during every discussion up until the day I found out how to annotate books, papers, essays, etc. Every time the teachers would talk about what we had to read for homework I seemed to never get the meanings that they did. I never picked up on the hidden meanings or parallels that were made. We would be assigned a passage or short story to read for homework and be asked to pick out different literacy devices such as tone, style, hyperboles, motifs, imagery, and allusions. Sometimes our stories would have a lot of references to certain colors or historic people and events. I could never tell someone how the different colors represented certain feelings. Because of my lack of understanding, I never participated in group discussions. This led to me never doing my best on tests. For the most part I understood the book, but not well enough to make an A on the test. Annotating came very easy for me. I am a very analytical person so as I read the books, essays, etc., I never left one important detail un-marked. I remember very clearly the first time I found this technique that could help me understand books and essays. My high school junior English teacher made the whole class go out and purchase our own copy of the book we were about to read. It was called Puddnhead Wilson by Mark Twain. In all my previous English classes we had never had to buy the book we were reading so this was a little odd to me. She told us that we would be annotating the book and that

Crabtree 2 it would help us when it came time for the test. She also said we would have our books checked after each reading assignment to make sure we were writing and highlighting in the book. At first I was scared that I would annotate wrong. I had never annotated anything and up until the day she explained what annotating was, I had no clue what it was or how you were supposed to do it. As we read the book I would circle words I did not know and I would underline parts that I felt were important. If I did not know what a word meant I would circle it and look up the definition. When I underlined certain sentences, I would write in the margins what I thought about it. At the end of each chapter I would summarize what I read and again highlight the main points. Sometimes I even drew pictures to help me remember certain people and their characteristics. In Puddnhead Wilson I drew pictures of the two boys that got switched. I drew one boy in ragged old clothes because he was a slave and the other in fancy clothes because he was a well-off white boy. I also drew another character with a magnifying glass because he played the role of a man who loved forensics and fingerprinting. When reading, I associated fingerprinting with a detective; so I gave him a magnifying glass. If I was never told to annotate the book I would not have done it, but being required too showed me that I do not have to go through English classes lost all the time. I can take that book or essay and break it down piece by piece and analyze it to the point that I could participate in class discussions and know what we were talking about. With me being such an analytical person I found that annotating was very easy. Now, every time I have a reading assignment I take notes so I can focus better and remember what I read. In the past whenever I did not understand the class discussions I would tune out the entire discussion. That did not help when it came time for testing. For some reason, I just never could understand what all the different literacy devices were. I also had a hard time summarizing

Crabtree 3 stories. My summaries were always broad and had little detail. Teachers wanted us to talk about the small details so that they could see that we actually read the book. English classes had always been hard for me. My mindset was that if I did not understand something then it must not be important. That way of thinking does not lead to success. Being literate and now having this way of understanding the readings gave me an advantage against those who do not annotate. Sylvia Scribner talks about literacy as power in her essay titled Literacy in Three Metaphors. She implies that literacy is power when you know more than someone else. I agree with her. Anytime that you know more information about a certain topic, person or event you are already ahead of others. You get to use that information to your advantage. Not all English classes at my high school learned how to annotate books. Some of the students who were in my class chose not to annotate because they said it was too time consuming. Yes, annotating does take you a little longer to complete the reading, but isnt a better understanding of the text and possible a higher grade worth it? Annotating gives you the ability to understand a text better than others who would just read straight through. Annotating on all my reading assignments has helped me become a better reader and writer. Each time I annotate I become better than the last time. I am not afraid anymore to be handed a reading assignment and asked to be prepared to discuss it in the next class. I have learned that anyone can become more literate in a subject if they put forth the effort to succeed.