Cole Remack

College Writing

Literacy Narrative

Professor Stoltman

My Literacy Evolution

Throughout school, many experiences and assignments have led to improving as a writer

and reader. Every year there is another English class that seems to be teaching the same things.

Walk into class, sit down and read a play written by Shakespeare then write an analytical paper

about how it relates to the present. But out of all the years of English, a few experiences come to

mind that demonstrate how I have learned and progressed as a writer. The first event that

allowed me to develop better reading and comprehension skills was during fourth grade. The

second, more recent, example of my literary progress was senior year of high school when I took

AP Seminar. Seminar taught me individual work ethic as well as gave me more experience in

writing formal style research papers.

One major learning moment involving literacy was during fourth grade English class.

The class was assigned the book Holes by Louis Sachar. At the time I decided I wanted to read it

all in one day so that the assignment would be over with. So, I read from the moment the book

got passed out, during the rest of the school day and the entire night at home. While I was

reading I started thinking about other things which drew my attention away from what was

occurring in the book. Even though I may have been technically reading what I was seeing, I was

not processing the information or thinking about what I was reading. Fortunately, in elementary

school, there were not any exams or tests on the book. But I was lost as the rest of the class
talked about the book and I could not recall major talking points of the book. This mistake taught

me that reading is more than just looking at words on a page; visualization and focus also must

be present. If I concentrated on the book and tried to understand the main theme and events, I

would have been able to understand what was going on in class to a better degree.

A more recent event that enhanced my literacy skills was taking the class AP Seminar. I

took this class senior year of high school in with the intention to improve my public speaking,

and research skills. Throughout the class, there were many challenging assignments that put me

out of my comfort zone, such as: short due dates, presenting research, and most influentially: the

“performance assessment task 1” (PT1). This was a research paper that was to be worked on by

myself and after the paper was created it needed to be presented to the class and recorded for part

of the composite score of the AP test itself. The PT1 was easily the most difficult and rigorous

assignments in that class and probably the most challenging English assignment I have ever

needed to complete. The topic that I chose to write about in the PT1 was “Overpopulation”

through the environmental perspective. This has become a relatively recent talking point because

of third world countries going through their respective industrial revolutions leading to higher

populations. In turn with this higher population, humanity is consuming more resources than we

ever have before. The consumption of natural resources easily tied into my environmental

perspective while researching and writing the paper. The real challenge came when preparing for

the speech. I have never been a huge fan of public speaking, even if it is something that I am

really passionate about. This was the exact reason why I decided I needed to take this class; it

was essential that I push my comfort levels in order to improve my weak skills. I am glad that I

made that decision because I am now much more comfortable with public speaking and large

word counts on papers are no longer as intimidating. Taking AP Seminar was a very good
choice, and while I may not have passed the AP test, I still think it was worth my time. The class

taught me how to effectively use my time and allocate it in terms of a deadline so that I am not

cramming the night before to finish a project. This skill is especially helpful now for college

classes because there is much less leniency when it comes to deadlines. I also learned how to use

and find credible resources. Prior to taking seminar, I mainly just used websites that I was

familiar with such as NPR or National Geographic. I was not aware of databases or scholar type

websites filled with credible published papers. This heavily enhanced how I research and what I

use to accomplish it. I could then look at what true scientists discovered and their opinions on

certain events; which is a completely different perspective than those of easily found articles

found off of a google search.

Through school assignments, with good and bad results, I have improved as a writer,

reader, and researcher which have all helped me develop as a literate adult. I learned from my

mistake as a fourth grader, that reading is more than just looking at letters on a page. Reading is

about being mentally present and picturing or understanding what the author wants to convey

through their work. I rushed through the book without giving much attention to the events, so I

was lost when the teacher talked about it during class. Since then, I have made sure to reread

sections that I started losing focus on so that I could understand how the novel developed. AP

Seminar helped me develop an effective research process, good time management, and better

public speaking skills. I took a risk when deciding to take that class and it paid off. I wanted to

have some better techniques for writing so I would not be lost when I went to college. The most

impactful things that came out of seminar were time management and developing outlines. Time

management was especially useful because it taught me to stick to a time frame when working

on a project. I generally have issues with procrastination, so this allowed me to prevent that bad
habit from surfacing. Outline development was also an influential skill that I picked up on during

AP Seminar. It showed me how organic paper composition can be and that there does not need to

be a one-size-fits-all template for every paper. Throughout school, there have been many

assignments that shaped how I think about writing. Significant learning experiences have come

through challenging myself to accomplish a goal that seems the most ambitious.