Literacy Autobiography (201003252)

(201003252)

Literacy Autobiography

 

The letters 'E-R' are the first two letters of the alphabet I wrote at the age of three. I can't recall doing this, perhaps because I was so young. I was present whenever my mother was rushed into the emerergency room to undergo heart surgery on several occasions, so I assume that was when I unconsciously had the letters 'ER' engraved in my head. Soon after, I was reading and writing effortlessly, I simply learned by repeativiely jotting down any letter or word that caught my eye from the hospital. In contrast, I struggled with writing a structured essay or paper, whether it was an elementary book report or a college admission essay written in the last year of high school due to the lack of training in the areas of critical reading, vocabulary, and grammar. Now, as a sophomore at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, I am determined to improve my writing abilities through paraphrasing, learning new terms, and going back to the basics of grammar.

 

When reading a short article in the news paper, I am at ease reading aloud as well as reading in a fair speed, but to my surprise I find it a challenge to paraphrase. Meaning, it's difficult to reword the article to a friend or to explain what I read to someone by stating the point and ideas mentioned in the article. I soon realized that not being able to paraphrase meant that I had trouble comprehending the content in the first place. To build critical reading skills, I choose three news paper articles that I am especially interested in such as world poverty, the first headline news from Korean Herald, and entertainment. Most importantly, I would make a conscious effort to read the headline or title of the article first, and try to assume what the article would foretell just by the title. Afterwards, I read each paragraph and sum it up in one core sentence. This is done throughout the entire article. When I am left with about 8 to 10 core sentences, I simply try to write one paragraph including all the points mentioned in the paragraphs. Lastly, after putting aside the written paragraph, I speed read the article once more and upon reading I paraphrase into my own words and write a paper. By doing this I can easily track which topics I am familiar with and vice versa what I am unfamiliar with. After doing so for quite some time, it becomes clear that the difficulty of understanding the material has a lot to do with the lack of vocabulary terms.

 

Just like most people, I tend to use particular words in my writing. It's almost as if there is a word bank on hand each time I write. The repetition of words perhaps may be a red alert sign meaning that there is limited vocabulary knowledge and actions must be taken. To enhance vocabulary skills, I tune into American Soap Operas, one of my favorite is Ugly Betty starring America Ferrera. Whenever an unfamiliar vocabulary and or expressions come up, which happens in almost all of the episodes, I don't hesitate to write it down in a notebook. In most cases, my professors use the vocabulary in their seminar and thus encourages me to continue training myself to build a stronger vocabulary in this way, because the moment I realize the term or phrase have been used other than from the Soap Opera, I have indeed gained knowledge of the termonology by being able to identify the different usage of terms on TV as well as in speech

 

 

Improvement in grammar is one of the basics to achieve a well structured essay. I have learned to form sentences in English in a natural way as in the way I have picked up speaking English. I write the way I speak; so many times I ignorantly use collocations. When I write, I am not aware of my grammatical mistakes, because I don't have the basic idea of how to go about making grammatical corrections. Therefore, the fundamentals of grammars such as subject verb agreement, run on sentences, and coherence, are a bit new to me. Fortunately, I have enrolled in a writing class, where workbooks to enhance grammar is used.

 

 

I believe, to achieve better writing the first step is to be be able to point out the areas of weakness., as mentioned earlier critical thinking, vocabulary, and grammar. Just as reading and writing words came easily at a young age for me, by training myself in the areas of paraphrasing, vocabulary, and grammar, I anticipate the outcome of my writing abilities when I become a senior at HUFS.