Reading and Writing Literary Narrative - Essay Example

When I was a young child, I attempted to trace the outline of letters in my mind. To me, all these letters of the alphabet were just little squiggles that seemed to randomly appear on a page. The way that I interpreted these figures was those of “little pictures.” During my years in kindergarten, my teacher would give me a long pointy thing with which to draw these squiggles. I could draw these figures quite well, or at least I thought I could. The other kids in my class always complimented me on how well I was able to draw these figures. I took great confidence from this and proudly showed off my drawings to my peers whenever the opportunity came up. My teacher was less pleased though; she said that I must try harder to trace the letters as they appeared. After some time, I was able to trace all these letters of the alphabet—I was even able to memorize two or three. The time of the day that was my favorite was just after lunchtime when it was time for all of us kids to sit on the mat and listen to our teacher sing the ABC song. I quite liked this song—I was even able to hum the tune in my head after not too long. To help us sing along, our teacher would point to each letter on the whiteboard as we spoke each letter. This was really good because I got to know each letter of the alphabet in order. It was, however, a struggle whenever the teacher covered up the alphabet chart and made us sing the ABC song by heart. If the teacher displayed a card with only a single letter on it, I could rarely guess which letter it was. It helped whenever another kid whispered the correct answer in my ear, yet I was not able to remember many of the letters by myself.

After I had finished kindergarten, I entered the first grade of a local elementary school. It was here that my reading and writing skills really started to improve. The teacher of my first-grade class was really kind to me and helped me whenever I was stuck with writing a particular letter. After a few short months, I was able to distinguish between every single letter of the alphabet. My writing was still a little messy, although it was improving with practice. One of the key things that aided my development was the use of alphabet posters in my bedroom. My parents decided that I could learn the alphabet better by having all the letters of the alphabet plastered on my walls. While I was trying to get to sleep, I was able to see the outline of each letter of the alphabet because of the light that was shining into my room. In my sleep, I was able to visualize all the letters and also the pattern of writing each of them. My childhood experience of learning how to read and write helped to equip me for the many challenges that lay ahead.