My Literacy Autobiography

Kelly S., Paige W., Mariah L., Xianxing Y., Rong S., and Jiahui W.
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Jiahui W.
Posts: 4
Joined: Thu Nov 08, 2018 4:59 am

My Literacy Autobiography

Post by Jiahui W. »

At thought of writing and reading, I want to talk my present situation at first. At present, I read less than before and most of writing pieces are teacher's requirements about writing. What was my attitude towards literacy previously?
From kindergarten to primary school, I learned to make sentences according to words and phrases, write paragraphs according to insets. The range of reading was small, just such as Tang poem, and corresponding composition books and one or two masterpieces. But I believe our resources of literacy also included listening to stories from our parents, their narration is vivid and a bit exaggerated, while left me impressive impression. The compositions of that period are sincere and lain. In general, I wrote narrative writings in chronological order, as we said "record running account". Actually, the Chinese teacher read my piece, she was a little angry. However, I couldn't reach higher level at that moment. In addition, it suddenly occurred to me that letters between boys and girls, the content was simple and emotional feeling, such as dislike, happiness, sadness, anger and so on. And I'm impressed by my notebooks of except, there were a lot of good words, god sentences, good paragraphs on them. I have to say, I'm grateful them.
At the beginning of junior high school, my head teacher asked us to write weekly daily. We were still unsophisticated students, so I recorded my all things and emotion. For example, after first week, I was sad and cried because I couldn't complete my homework even though I had studied hard on weekend. To be honest, this homework laid a foundation for later writing. And then, my Chinese teacher asked us to all sorts of composition, including narrative writing, argumentative essays and prose. My second Chinese teacher had a special way to encourage me to write, she heartened me to write casual literary notes whenever you want to record, maybe they were feelings, thins that happened, or excepts. So far I have seen my transcript every time, I would recall my feelings at that moment. What a good way/ I'm very appreciated with my second Chinese teacher, she appreciated my essays, and encouraged me to write by my heart and practice much. She sent me a Yu Dan's book about apppreciation of poetry. I have kept it carefully up to now. I respect and love her, she made me confident and let me have the source of writing. In relation to English writing, I think it was easy, if you had had clear logic and complete sentences, and good writing, you would have obtained good scores. In terms of reading, I read a lot, and most of reading material were romance magazines and masterpieces. I think they are funny and fit the mood of teenagers.
In high school, I broadened my horizon, I read much, such as foreign masterpieces, fashion magazines, Japanese novels and essays, British and American novels. Sometimes my peers read chicken soup for the soul. As a matter of fact, high school students always have some annoyance. On the occasion, I really liked reading, sometimes I got a nice novel, I would stay up late t read. Occasionally, I read books on the lessons. After class, "Did you read this detective novel, if you hadn't, I would tell you the main synopsis." This is what my good friend often talked to me. This chatty girl is also my instructor on reading. As for writing, for my test, I needed to practice my argumentative essays, my Chinese teacher required me in this way. At the same time, I liked English writing, even if just the composition of exercises and test papers. Because I could make full use of what I had learned, thar were words, phrases, expressions, sentence structures. I liked to find my English teacher to ask her to check my works and instruct me to produce better work
In the process f reading and writing, I thank my teachers, I learned a lot from them. And I am fruitful account of many reading materials. I will make use of my free time to read more and practice writing. Do it out of interest as before.
Kelly S.
Posts: 2
Joined: Tue Nov 13, 2018 2:06 am

Re: My Literacy Autobiography

Post by Kelly S. »

Hello Jiahui,

Overall Response:
I enjoyed reading your paper. I liked all of the details you used to help describe how your literacy has evolved throughout the years. I also feel as though much of my literacy from when I was young was brought to fruition by my parents. I also liked how you mentioned the tendency to focus on writing based more on emotions when you are younger. It isn't something that I really thought about prior to reading your paper, but it makes a lot of sense. I also enjoyed how your instructor told you to read detective stories. I am personally a fan of mystery stories, so I was wondering if it was a particular book or series.

Focus:
Overall, your paper seems pretty focused. There are a couple points that felt a little confusing or less related to your literacy. I enjoyed when you talked about how boys and girls would write letters based on emotion, but it felt a little out of place with your personal literacy story. Perhaps if you revised it to show more of how it is grounded in your own experience, you could keep that idea and information without it feeling out of place.

Development for Readers:
For the most part, I feel as though you have considered your audience. However, there are a couple things that could be explained more fully for a foreign reader. What is the Tang Poem? Briefly explaining what the poem is about and how that related to your experience would help your audience to get more significance out of that point.

Organization and Coherence:
Overall, your paper feels very organized and coherent. You used a chronological order to organize your thoughts, which is an effective way to organize your thoughts. However, your first paragraph does not seem to fit this trend. You started off with present day, and then turned your attention towards how your literacy was previously. I feel as though it would make more sense to have the present day and the end of your piece. If you are stuck for ideas on how to make a different introduction, think about what literacy is in a larger scale, and then narrow that idea down to your own personal experience. Lastly, I think it would make more sense if in the paragraph where you are focusing on the things you read in high school and separated were you are talking about what you wrote into a different paragraph. You already said a lot about the reading to make the paragraph longer, but writing is a separate point of literacy.

Language, Grammar, and Conventions:
There are a couple points that I found a little confusing. One of those points is when you started by saying "At the beginning of junior high school, my head teacher asked us to writeweekly daily. Was it every week, or every day that you were writing for your teacher? Another point of confusion is at the end of your second paragraph when you said "I have to say, I'm grateful them." Did you mean to say that you are grateful forthem? Something else I noticed was that for poem titles, you want to put them in quotations, and for titles of novels, you want to italicize them. Lastly, when you are revising for the next draft, check over your sentences to make sure there are no fragments or comma-splices.

Main Emphasis for Revision:
The main things I think you should focus on for revision are changing your first paragraph and moving the present day information to the end, and then checking over your fragments and comma-splices. I think if additionally, you check your focus on the point I mentioned previously and add more to your concluding paragraph, you will have a much stronger piece. Overall, you had a lot of interesting points in your life that influenced your literacy, and I found it very enjoyable to read.
Jiahui W.
Posts: 4
Joined: Thu Nov 08, 2018 4:59 am

Re: My Literacy Autobiography

Post by Jiahui W. »

First of all, as fans of detective novels, I would like to share with you that what I read is a series of detective novels, especially Japanese ones.My favorite author is Keio Dongye. Secondly, I will take your advice to correct my passage. So I want to explain "tang poetry" to you.The Tang dynasty was a flourishing period of poetry in our history. Many poems of that period became classics and there were many famous poets, such as Li Bai and Du Fu.According to your suggestion, I think tang poetry seems to have a lot to do with my aesthetic education of literary writing.I have also read the advice you gave me later, and I will study hard.
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