Boyanapalli 1

Soumya Boyanapalli

Professor Lynn M. Raymond

UWRT 1104

25 January 2017

Writing Prompts 1 Literacy Narrative

As far back as I can remember, education has been greatly emphasized in my household.
Ever since I was little, there were two main subjects that were more focused on every day in my
household one was playing with numbers and other was playing with alphabets. Counting
everything starting from stairs to spoons to flowers in garden, and then stitching the alphabets
together to make words were daily practice. So math and language arts were the two subjects that
were constantly taught to me when I was little. At the age 1, my grandparent took me to India as
I was their first grandchild. I stayed there till I was 2 years old, so most of my initial learning of
the alphabet, the writing of letters and reciting small nursey rhymes were taught by my
grandparents. My grandparents remind me that I would constantly repeat alphabets and rhymes
over and over again. I dont remember exactly how my grandparents taught me but I have seen
videos of me learning and singing the alphabets along with my grandparents.

When I came back to US at the age of 2, I stayed home with my mon and then at age 3, I
started preschool at Hiller Elementary School in Madison Heights, MI. I learned to write words
and read small books. As I grew older and finally got to elementary school and attended public
school in Ann Arbor, Michigan, I started reading chapter books. In school, I had to maintain a
reading log which was mandatory. We were graded on the reading log. Every night we were
required to read a minimum of 30 mins and we had to log it down on a sheet of paper where
we would write the name of the book, how long we read for, and a signature of your parent, and
then every Friday the teacher would collect it for a grade, and then we would get the sheet back
on Monday for the new week. So reading was taken very seriously.

I guess I could say that I am not much of reader now-a-days as much of my time is
consumed in assignments, projects and home works. When I think back to my young reading
days, there are four series of books that pop up in my head. In elementary school at a very young
age, the two series of books that I would always read were the Magic Treehouse and Junie B
Jones. I can remember very vividly that I used to be very obsessed with these two series and
would always be reading them, like whenever my mom would ask me to read, I would always
grab a book from one of these series. As I got into middle school the two series that I got really
attached to were The Series of Unfortunate Events and of course The Hunger Games. I always
loved reading these books and couldnt wait to finish to find out what the ending was. These
were also books that I would always be so excited to discuss with my friends and see what each
other viewpoints were on the book. During summers, my mom used to sign me up with the
library for the reading challenge to make sure that I keep reading.
 Boyanapalli 2

If I had to choose between whether reading or writing was the most difficult, I would
definitely choose writing. I never had a problem with reading unless it was reading a lengthy
textbook about chemistry or something that I didnt enjoy, but that too I wouldnt consider as
difficult but just very uninteresting. I actually always loved having to read books for school and
the next day we would come back and discuss them, because all the books that I were mandatory
to be read in high school were all books that enjoyed reading. Writing on the other hand has
always been a struggle for me, I remember junior year of my high school I took AP Language
Composition and that was my first time taking an English course in AP. My teacher was very
helpful in helping us become good writers. In that class I wrote essays and what I would do was
write the essay, turn it in, then my teacher would grade it/mark on it with comments and give us
a grade back and then if we liked the grade, we received we stuck with it but if we didnt, we had
a chance to rewrite it two more times. This had really helped me not only with the grade in that
class but with also the way I wrote, making me realize what I had to fix. This also helped near
the end of the year when the last essay was due, majority of the people didnt turn in their essay
for the second time, since they received good grade the first time they turned it in. Though this
helped me a lot, I still feel that I am not that great of a writer and never have been. Writing was
never an activity that I enjoyed, it was more of a thing that was mandatory. Its not that I dont
want to be a good writer, like if someone sat with me and helped me become a good writer, I
wouldnt say no. I would love to learn to become a better writer but no one really every has done
that except for my High School Junior Year teacher.

In conclusion, overall most of my reading and writing was taught to me by my

grandparents and my mom. They were the ones that helped me from the beginning and my
school helped out a lot for reading. The required reading made me a better reader but even
though I never had a real good teacher to guide me and help me with my writing except for a
short period in high school, I believe that I am average writer and would definitely love to
increase my writing capabilities.