The Knowledge of Reading - Essay Example

No books, no paper, and no words with letters. There should be no world without reading or writing. Children’s favorite activity is learning how to read their favorite books. Without reading, it would be so much harder for them to access their favorite heroes, princes and villains, so much harder to access the ideas of people who have had different life experiences. It is one of the most important aspects of child’s, teenager’s, and adult’s life. Reading helps individuals in many ways in order to get through each day by finding direct information, communicating with other people, and accessing ideas from other perspectives and other people. First of all, reading helps people find things that they may need. People read directions, warnings, and advertisings. Without reading, no one would know what is right and what is wrong. Reading warnings and special signs prevent people from getting into dangerous situations. For example, there are signs that read “caution, end zone” to tell people to avoid a certain area (Carol). If a person does not know how to read that, her or she may get into trouble. The roads give directions so that people can find their way to any destination. In order to get to certain places, people must know how to read directions and signals. It is always important to know how to read because it prevents people from being lost or confused. Secondly, reading helps when communicating with our family and friends. Today, everyone communicates by email, Facebook or texting, etc. What if nobody knew how to read? How would relatives that live far away with each other? This is why reading is truly important. For example, I have relatives living in Jordan that write me by email. I read about how they are doing and what has been going on. If I did not know how to read, I would not understand what they wrote, or worse, I would not have as much communication with them. Reading allows people in one part of the world to tell people in other parts what is happening on political and social levels too, beyond simple family communication. People know what happens around the world by reading newspapers and articles. They are aware of the actions that happen among them. Reading also challenges the mind. In the article, “Response to Alberto Manguel’s ‘Reading Ourselves and the World around Us,” the author says that words and letters are only symbols that allow us to give meaning to literature. He also says, “If people do not take the time to read and give meaning to everyday occurrences, they will not fully understand the reason behind a lot of things and will not be able to function properly in their lives”(Alberto 21). This is important because people need to know the surroundings and the knowledge inside themselves which will help them to reach their goals and put their lives on track, because the more knowledge the individual have, the more chance to success. Most importantly, however, reading gives people the ability to access ideas of other people, from other perspectives. Each person has only one life, only one lived experience, through which to filter what happens in the world. This can be a very disastrous thing. For instance, if someone grows up very rich and in a lot of luxury, they may not be able to understand that some people are very poor and have nothing to eat. Or if they grow up in a very repressive society where they are not allowed to say what they think or challenge existing ideas, they may not know that there are other ways of doing things, other societies that act differently. Reading allows people to break out of this cycle, to understand the world from many different perspectives. This happens because every time one reads, one is exposed to a different way of thinking, a different way of seeing the world through a different set of filters. This is true in non-fiction, obviously, because it allows a person to explain how they think through and work through things. But this is also true in fiction: reading a book about a character who lives in poverty, or who is in love with someone they cannot get, or who is angry or upset or anything else develops the ability to be empathetic, and understand different perspectives a little bit better. According to Paul, this affect makes people who read more fiction much more empathetic than other people (Paul). Reading is very important for many, many reasons. Firstly, it helps people in their every day lives. It helps get to places and communicate with far away relatives. Also, it questions the mind and people’s knowledge in every aspect. According to carol, “The act of reading takes place when we observe things such as the weather, our pets, as well as changes in people’s facial expressions. Practically everything we do is read and therefore we must place much more importance on how we analyze the things we deal with”. And so this shows the importance of reading by observing direct information, connecting between individuals, and examining our minds. Finally, reading allows us to feel empathy for people who are different from ourselves. So the art of reading is very essential, and without keep it alive people could be in a whole different place of pain. Work cited Geddes, Carol. "March13's Blog." Weblog. Wordpass, 12 Jan. 2010. Web. 19 March. 2012. Manguel, Alberto. "Reading Ourselves and the World around Us." Actively Reading Our World. Deanna Davis, 2008. 21 Paul, Annie. "Your Brain on Fiction." New York Times. New York Times, 17 Mar. 2012. Web. 28 May 2012. Ala khouri English 091 Professor Lynch 28 May 2012 Writers Memo Revising something that you have written is often harder than writing something completely new. This should be unsurprising, because it means being critical of one’s self, which is something that can be very difficult for even the very best of writers. I found the revision process to be challenging, especially in attempting to restructure the essay, but found that adding new content to expand the ideas was the easiest part. Revising content was a difficult process, especially in changing the structure of the essay. I found that it was very hard to move anything around without it simply seeming like pointless shuffling, and it also meant re-structuring and re-thinking my thesis statement. I found that eventually the best thing to do was stick with the structure I had, but make it more explicit and obvious. I did this by revising all of the topic sentences of my paragraphs to do two things. First, I wanted to make transitions smoother, so I added transitions where there were not any before to reference the paragraph that went first. This means that the reader was better able to follow what I was saying. Secondly, I also wanted to make the topic sentences as clear as possible, so I made sure they tied in directly to my thesis as much as possible. All of this cleaned up my structure, which made it more readable, I hope. While restructuring was difficult and time consuming, adding new content and correcting grammar were both fairly easy. Correcting grammar simply meant going through it again and again and correcting anything that was wrong. And possibly because of the breadth of my topic, but I found it very easy to tie in a new idea to my existing essay – empathy being a good result of reading and of written knowledge. I think the constant writing in this course has been very helpful to my writing skills. I think one of the biggest ways I have improved is my simple grammar – I did not have good English grammar before entering this course, and I believe it has shown development. Furthermore, I believe that I understand better how to take other people’s ideas an integrate them into my own writing without plagiarizing – using other people as a jumping board for my own thoughts or experiences, while giving them just due. Finally, I think that I have become a better and more critical reader, which helps me deconstruct my own writing and better see its strengths and its weaknesses, and where I can improve it or where it is already strong. Read More