August 29, 2013 Literacy Narrative Literacy is an ever important skill in the modern world, no skill can single

handedly hinder or advance your success in the workplace. Reading and understanding how to use what you read can make or break you. Literacy is an odd trait to learn, their is not a single authority that controls all of your development in the subject of reading and writing. Some learn from teachers, some from parents, some themselves, most however use a combination of resources to further their knowledge. In my case I learned primarily from my father at an early age to read books. He taught me to read for enjoyment and simple functions of self satisfaction. This is not the complete extent of literacy however. It took another external source to motivate me into realizing the other half of literacy. Looking beyond the obvious took a math teachers help. My fathers role in my literacy was my first introduction to the written word. I dont remember how old I was when we started reading together but I do remember what book we started with, Harry Potter. The way we read was a monkey see monkey do type of style, at first I would sit there at a young age listening to him talk as I followed along on the paper until I fell asleep ending the session. As time went on my father would ask my to read a sentence at a time by myself before he began reading aloud again. This pattern continued until one day he asked me to read a paragraph, then a page, then two pages. As I became more confident as a reader I found myself cheating and reading ahead of my father as he read aloud. Once I was to this point I was on my own. No longer was the help of my father needed and I began to read books by myself. While I gained the ability to read and have fun with it, I required a more self driven motive to truly gain my ability to process and truly effectively use writing. Im a very stubborn person. This stubbornness gets the best of me and often leads to no good. This time it lead me to process information given to me skeptically. My tenth grade teacher was(is) my least favorite person in the world, he drove me nuts. Everything he said I tried to debunk or somehow find a flaw in. I made him angry and most of the class angry with my arguments and brick headed approach. His favorite thing to do was to draw connections between real life situations and math problems, naturally I tried to find a way to prove his connection invalid. In every short paper we read I would look at it as critically as possible I never found a fault in his reasoning in these short documents, but I read them as intently as I could and as a side effect I gained the ability to question how readings can help me and how I can pick readings apart for meaning. One area of literacy I require immediate advancement in is my ability to communicate with proper grammar, and flow. I am willing to say that my ability to pick apart a argument on paper and present my opinions orally is above average, but when it comes to putting my words down I feel as if my flare with oral representation is lost in the organized structured of scholarly writing. In this way my journey to becoming a scholarly rhetor is hindered. The obtainment of this skill is not something I have strived for in the past. Now as Im advancing through life and realizing that some of the important discussions must take place on paper im regretting my neglect of this very serious problem. As I write more and read more im starting to become accustomed and practiced, much like an experienced runner slowly improving their times and distance. Im learning that perhaps literacy is not only an unavoidable necessity but a potentially fun ability. In order to maximize your potential in the modern world focusing on improving your ability to cognitively process literature is must. Just as it is important to practice other skills it is important to practice your literacy, whether its writing a text message or reading for scholarly intent you have to try in order to improve.