Paul Boughner

Professor Rinke

Process Memo

February 14, 2013

           

            Throughout the time spent composing the essay, and creating the Animoto slideshow, this assignment has created a way for me to look back on my literacy and ask questions about myself as a reader and a writer.  “Am I a strong reader? Am I a creative writer?”  These questions are the questions that I thought of when we created our literacy timelines.  I have always had a thing for writing, but not so much for reading.  Not liking reading is probably why I don’t like doing research papers for school, and that I lean more towards papers that have a topic I can relate to with minimal research.       

            In my essay I talked about my writing experiences in high school where I picked up writing poetry.  This had a correlation with my expressions and feeling at the time and I just really like writing poetry.  My favorite styles of poetry to write were free verse, along with lyrical poetry.  These styles of poetry are eerily similar to lyrics of a song.  Very fun to write in your free time, which is where I found myself write most of my poetry.  Still to this day I write poetry here and there just for fun.   

            I have learned a lot more about myself as a writer and a reader, after constructing the essay and timeline because it was a time of reflection for me.  I had a lot of influences when I was young.  Some of these influences included my Mom reader to me almost every day, and my dad bringing me home some car magazines he would get at work so that I could see and attempt to read about.  This really sparked my interest in reading because of all the cool things I could see and learn about on television or in books.  I was really intrigued by learning new things about cars, sports, animals, and whatever else I was interested in when I was young. 

            This assignment I feel was very beneficial for me as a learner throughout my first couple semesters at college, to see where I stand with myself.  Am I satisfied with what I have accomplished?  Can I work more on my literacy skills and habits?  I think that there is a lot of room for improvement for me in my literacy.  I hope to take more advantage of the writing center this semester because last semester the two times I went for a class it really helped.  That service will be the key to improving my literacy skills so that I can become the better writer that I want to be.  It will also be the key to helping me with those hated citations for research papers.

            Overall I loved doing this assignment and hope that there are more in store during this course in the future so that me and other classmates can benefit from. 

Education Needs An Digital-Age Upgrade

To sort of tie in the literacy factor in this article, Virginia Heffernan talks about how a class of students turned in terrible course papers. The class of students were from Duke University, talked about in the book titled “Now You See It”, by Cathy N. Davidson.

Here is where literacy comes into play in this article and in the book in this quote, after explaining that written work such as papers are given out on a regular basis every semester for students.

 “She questions herself-“What if bad writing is a product of the form of writing required in school — the term paper — and not necessarily intrinsic to a student’s natural writing style or thought process?” She adds: “What if ‘research paper’ is a category that invites, even requires, linguistic and syntactic gobbledygook?”

From this one can conclude that literacy influences their thought process and their writing style.  Not everyone has the same writing style, and in contrast no one has the same literate skills as another.  This means that people have different views on other’s writing styles and may critique them in either a negative or positive way.  Furthermore teachers and students have different views on each other’s literacy, due to the fact that the teachers or professors learned their literate skills differently.  For me books and pictures in magazines set the foundation of my literate skills because I would associate them to their meaning or their names.  Other people may have been more intrigued by music or art and other influences that set their literate skills.

Literacy Timeline

First Word:  Mom                               Theme: Books and Reading(Pictures)

Favorite Book that my mom read to me:  “Goodnight Moon”

Around the age of 4 I liked to draw characters from the books that my mom read to me

Around age 6 I used to love watching the Jack Hannah TV show, which was about animals and marine wildlife.  I used to beg my mom to by me the National Geographic magazines. From there I used to be obsessed with sharks and fish, and I would memorize the names of them from TV and pictures in books

I started listening to music on the long car rides (Music had a rhythm that was sort of like reading, having a fluent reading basis)

Learning how to type and using computers really influence spelling

Weekly spelling tests in school

Reading the Matt Christopher books and American Chillers books during elementary school

My friend and I used to read together for school and for the group projects we did in school

I was really intrigued by music in my middle school years, because it was easy to relate to the lyrics of a song to my thoughts and emotions at the time.

Now I am still into music and some occasional reading here and there depending on the topic.

I like reading sports stories or sports news articles now

I look forward to using my literacy skills that all of these things helped me with, to my future career goal at being an evidence technician.

I think that it is very easy to relate to Sherman Alexi’s “Superman & Me.”  Everyone had struggles that they had to overcome throughout the time of learning to read and become literate.  The word “paragraph” was something that he struggled with, and for me the word “tuff” was something that I struggled to spell and even pronounce.  Becoming literate is something essential to both reading and writing because it sets a foundation of understanding, whether you are in the position of being the writer or the reader.  Being an Indian child he had the stereotype of being “stupid”.  Having someone judge you and just put a label on you is something that really shaped his confidence for his literacy. 

Free Write #1

Writing will be the utter most important key to the success of my future career.  I have decided on majoring in Biology, which I can choose numerous career options.  From teaching Biology in high school, being a sanitary specialist, and even going into the field of forensics, I am sure to find the career right for me.  In these careers, writing is the way to put certain situations onto paper for documentation.  I will need a ton of documentation throughout my studying of biology, as well as the career I choose to do.  For instance if I choose to teach biology I will need to write down all the experimental things that I conduct in the classroom for later use, when I perform that same experiment.  Writing can also be a great way to communicate with other in the same or differing fields, so that we can spread knowledge and ideas to one another.