Sweatt 1

Partners Name: TJ Maynor

Feedback: (Maybe make a new introduction and say that your family, friends, and
school/stuttering affected your literacy. Then use this paragraph as the first body
paragraph instead of the introduction.), (go into a little more detail about a specific
example of your mother reading or if your father read or did anything mention that.),
(Throw in some examples of the movies or how you struggled or just more detail), (This
sentence is a little confusing.), (elaborate about this, and try not to end a paragraph with
a quote), (try finishing this paragraph with how you overcame your stuttering or how it
affected you long term. When you write your conclusion maybe talk about how you feel
about your literacy now).
What I did with the feedback: I used it to strengthen some of my paragraphs. The first
piece of feedback about making a new introduction help me to use more space so I
wasnt short, it also helped to give a little background knowledge before I jumped right
into writing.
How well did he apply himself to bettering my paper? TJ gave me some very insightful
thoughts on how I could elaborate more on certain pieces of the memoir. His feedback
was very useful

Sweatt 2

Steven Sweatt
Mrs. Knudson
UWRT 1102
23 February 2015
Literacy Memoir

Literacy has never been my strong point. My parents started me out at a young
age by reading to me, and teaching me the alphabet. These experiences gave me a
strong base for my literacy, however throughout the years I struggled to build on to that
base. There were many factors that caused me to ineffectively strengthen my literacy
such as my stuttering. As I sit here and reflect on the literacy experiences of my past, I
wonder if there is anything I could have done differently to help strengthen my literacy.
My earliest experience with literature that I recall, was when my mother would
read my brother and me stories before we went to bed. She would mix it up every night,
Bible stories such as David and Goliath, or the Feeding of the Five Hundred, and Dr.
Seuss books, such as the Cat in the Hat, and One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish.
My parents were wanting to provide my brother and me with a strong base for our
literature, so while they were reading to us at night they would often stop mid-sentence
and ask either Kevin or I to finish it. She read The sun did not shine. It was too wet to
play. Then asked me to finish the page, I struggled to pronounce the words but my
mother would help me sound them out. So we sat in the house, all that cold, cold, wet

Sweatt 3

day. (The Cat in the Hat) Even though I stuttered the whole time I was reading those
few short sentences, my mother was patient with me. This meant a great deal to me as I
felt incompetent. I would later not feel this support when I started school, which stunted
my literacy.
When I was around the age of three, the days my mother had to work she would
take me to my grandmothers house to stay. I would sit in front of her movie cabinet with
the doors open, trying to read the titles of the movies. Rugrats, Toy Story, and all of the
Barney and Sesame Street videos. I would often have to take a movie to my
grandmother to ask her what the title was, one was The Bear in the Big Blue House.
However through the act of my reading the titles of the movies, and my mother reading
to me as a child, I remember the day I went to my room and found the book Firehouse
Dog. I was intrigued by the picture of a fireman and his Dalmatian on the front cover. I
sat down on the floor at the end of my bed and opened it up, as I read through it I would
have to stop to break words down the way my mother had taught me. When I was
finished with the book, I remember running into the kitchen screaming, I can read
granny, I can read by myself. She could not believe it, so she asked me to read it to
her. Even though it took me a while to read it to her, she was so proud that I did it all by
myself. This may not seem like that big of an experience now, but the feeling of
accomplishment I had that day helped to form the base of my literacy.
As I grew older, my reading skills improved, and I also starting meeting more
people other than my family, such as people from my church and the children of my
mothers friends. It was not until I started Kindergarten that I realized I had a really bad
stuttering problem. We were starting the first day by introducing ourselves to the rest of

Sweatt 4

the class and when it came my turn, I stuttered so bad that no one understood me.
Some of the kids began to laugh and make fun of me. I felt so embarrassed, and then
on top of that I had to introduce myself again. My teacher and classmates could not
understand me most of the time, I soon realized that it was also a struggle for my own
parents to understand me, and as you can imagine that was really embarrassing.
Although it was difficult for them to understand me, my parents had the understanding
that I could not help it, however the others did not. When I first started school, I would
be the first to volunteer to read something. That was until kids started to pick on my
about my stuttering. The teasing and joking about my stuttering made me so
embarrassed that it came to the point where I would not talk around anyone who was
not family, besides for my best friend Josh. I feel as this damaged my literacy a great
deal. I was ashamed of my literacy, I felt that it was inferior to someone elses on
account of my stuttering. As I grew older, my stuttering seemed to decrease. However
there would always be that one real bad time when I was in a crowd, Id stutter and they
would laugh. This made me angry, however I knew I had to find a way to turn that anger
into motivation so I could improve my literacy. I tried many different things such as
saying what I had to say in my head before I actually said it out loud. These little tricks
seemed to help, and I began to feel more confident. Now that Im in college I still
struggle with my stuttering, but with the little tricks I have learned along the way I can
stop collect myself, say it in my head then proceed. This may not seem like a big deal,
but when you struggle with something such as stuttering your whole life you feel a
certain extent of accomplishment when you overcome it.

Sweatt 5

Now that I have given you a good understanding of the struggle I had with my
stuttering, we can look at my literacy throughout my school years. While my brother and
I were growing up we both had to do daily readings for our school work, and as you can
imagine that meant a lot of books. We would always aggravate my mom to carry us to
the book store in our local mall. We feel in love with the magic tree house series, we still
have the entire collection at the house. There magic adventures intrigued my young
mind. Once I grew out of these books, I lost the desire to read, we no longer were
required to read every night for homework so I had no reason to. For most of my fourth
and fifth grade year I would not read unless I was required to. When I went to middle
school we were tested on our reading skills, and it turns out I was preforming on a fourth
graders reading level. This was not a shock to me as I had struggled with my literacy in
the past. I figured that I would just go through the motions again, but my sixth grade
teacher Mrs. Randall had others plans. She saw potential in me, she pushed me every
day to do better so that I could reach my full potential. She soon found out that I hated
reading, but she had a plan. She told me to write a list of things that I liked to do outside
of school such as football, baseball, firefighting, hunting and fishing. Mrs. Randall went
through the trouble to create a list of books that were on these subjects. We had a book
report coming up so I chose the book Crack Back from my list. Crack back was about
a high school football player and his struggle with the pressures of high school as well
as the influence of his teammates and performance enhancing drugs. This book was so
interesting to me that I looked forward to getting a little bit of extra time during the day
so I could read a little. When I finished the book, I felt accomplished. I had all the
information to write an amazing book report, and even though my hand writing was

Sweatt 6

horrific, Mrs. Randall said that my report was the best in the class, I went in to detail
about the book but most of all I was passionate about it. I liked this book so much that I
read it again my eighth grade year and did another report on it.
In my years at East Union middle school, I remember reading a lot. It was not
until I got to high school that we started writing and typing a whole lot. The first big piece
of writing that I did was my around the world in eighty days project. We spent countless
hours in the library researching our country, and writing our research paper. The actual
paper was not that bad, but I dreaded the presentation. I was so concerned with what
people would think if I was to stutter during my presentation. When it came time for me
to present, my hands were sweating because I was so nervous, but with the little tricks I
learned I took my time and made a great presentation. Research papers where a large
role in my literacy throughout high school as well as little weekly responses to articles.
In these responses we were to reflect on the article, but it really felt like we were just
going through the motions, fluffing up a response so our teachers would give us a good
grade. Through these responses we never really gave our authentic voice, how we felt
on the subject. That all changed the first day I walked into Mrs. Cochrans first year
writing class this past fall.
My first opinion of Mrs. Cochran, Oh Lord this is going to be a long semester.
I thought she was one of those cut and dry professors, wanting to teach us grammar
and formal writing, but boy was I wrong. The first thing she wrote on the board was the
word generalizations circled it, and then put a big x-mark over it. She taught me to give
my authentic voice in my paper, no generalizations, and no summarys. This changed
my view on writing, I was no longer just throwing stuff on the paper in order to get a

Sweatt 7

good grade, I was actually sharing how I felt on the subject and showing my views in my
writing.
As you can see my literacy has had its many ups and downs throughout the
years. I found a way to overcome my stuttering and that gave me more confidence in
my literacy. I believe that it is still not to its full potential, but these university writing
programs are a step in the right direction. I hope to keep strengthening my literacy, as
there is always room for improvement.