Tripathi 1

Saugat Tripathi
Professor Dr. Jovonne J. Bickerstaf
ENGW 104: Writing Literacy and Discourse
4 September 2015

I still remember when I was in my first grade. Afraid of the words,

trying to run away from the texts and enjoying playing soccer with my
friends. Despite of mastering the art of alphabets in pre-school, I still couldnt
grasp the idea of joining them to give meaning. I was afraid of the words. I
wasnt skilled enough to join them and make them more meaningful. I was
good with numbers, but language frustrated me.
By the time I was in primary school I had developed myself with some
decent grammatical skills but I was(and still am) not much of a creative
writer. I struggled with writing as a child. I was horrible at spelling words and
my exercise books were flooded with red ink. I got some idea of organization
but to putting an idea into an essay was something esoteric to me as
someone in primary-school.
Because of my inclination towards math and sciences, my high school
classes consisted of all sciences and mathematics except for the core
requirements. Reading to me was not for inspiration, but for information, and
writing was just a job for me. All I read besides the course were news or

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some interesting science articles. I was so much repelled by reading fiction

that I had not read a single novel till the end of my high school.
I had struggled with English in my childhood. I did not speak in English
at my home, and in the school I only spoke with a few teachers in English.
Learning a language primarily through textbook was frustrating. In
Streets(1984) cross cultural research, he claimed, what the particular
practices and concepts of reading and writing are for a given society
depends upon the context. As for me, I had not social context for English. I
did not know the cultural or social settings of Britain or the USA. So I started
to get a better understanding via diferent sources. I improved my English
not just by reading my English textbook but through osmosis of language,
through lyrics and dialogues. I progressed in English taking baby steps, and
my progression in the understanding of language was reflected in my writing.
By letting myself into other culture, I got better in understanding the context
of the literature we read from Britain, South Africa or the United States. As I
ascended towards the end of my high school, English seemed to get easier
for me. In fact, I started writing in my leisure - to reflect on my life or give
my mind a break from the emotions.
Despite of having all of these challenges writing, poems came naturally
to me. Rhyming was something I had written my first poem when I was
seven. I enjoyed. I made parodies of popular songs. Poetry has been a way
of expressing myself. Whether its disappointment or rejoice, despair or
epiphany, I wrote these emotions in rhymes. As I wrote my poem, I

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performed it in my mind, for the people, place or time. A thought about life
or idealizing a political idea, unrest in the country: I wrote poems about all of
these topics.
I try to make my writing more as a dialogue than a collection of text.
Even when I am writing this essay, I am writing it as if I am talking to
someone. Humans have evolutionarily have been designed to communicate
by sounds rather than texts, and I try making my text as vocal as possible.
There is no alternative to writing more for writing better but there are
many things we can do to increase what we write. Since our writing is only as
good as what we think, I believe writing and our thinking capacity have a
strong relation. We can only think critically if we are exposed to as many
view points as possible. As Elon Musk famously said in his interview with
Salman Khan that reading is the fastest way of getting information. Reading
is one of the most efficient ways to getting exposed to many ideas form
various standpoints or understanding what something means. When we read
from many sources, we build up ideas and form new ideas. When we form
new ideas, we write them, share them and reflect on them. It is a cyclic
process one thing leading to the next and making each step better each
time.

Whenever I am trying to write something with emotions, I build my emotion

up first. This happened by chance. As I writing some hateful poem, I listened

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to Rock music that was angry at the world. The music helped to extenuate
the emotions and put out a better essay.