rough draft of my literacy narrative

Literacy Narrative

                When I was first learning to read, probably around the age of 4 or 5, my sister would often let me read to her. Nikki, my older sister, being about 7 years older than me and an intimidating person in my eyes (she wasn’t the nicest when we were growing up…) often made me feel uncomfortable when I would read aloud in her presence. “You’re saying that wrong!” or “That’s not how you pronounce that word!” were often things I would hear her say, or scream, at me when I was trying to put together all of these different letters and vowels and consonants and such into structure such as words and sentences (although I was usually reading Doctor Seuss so the sentences weren’t too awful complex). When I did pronounce a word or phrase wrong, and it happened often, she would let me know. When that would happen, I do remember that in my mind I would think “I don’t think that’s how you say this…” or “I don’t remember how to say that” and I would try my best to say the word as correctly as I possibly could, but a lot of times it wasn’t. When she would harshly correct me, I felt awful. I felt stupid! “How hard should it be to accomplish something that other people do every single day!” I felt powerless; this impossible task in front of me often seemed to hard to do, and I eventually started to hate reading aloud. To my sister or anyone. I figured, if I’m not reading aloud to people, then how can I be chastised for making mistakes?

                I soon discovered, however, that the task was not impossible at all! It just required some time and a lot of dedication and hard work. Reading was pretty simple for me once I got the gist of it. In fact, I enjoyed reading and I did it often. In school, we read aloud in class a lot. Once we started to get into books a little more complex than Doctor Seuss, I really enjoyed reading. I read more than just the books and articles that we were assigned to read in class. What made me so interested in reading I think, was the getting to escape for awhile. The sense that no matter what’s happening in real life at that moment, if you just pick up a book or even a magazine, you can take your mind to a different place. At least, that’s why I enjoy it now. When I crack open a book that I know I’m going to like or I continue reading on in a book that I’ve already enjoyed so far, I just love not knowing what will happen next. I think that’s the thrill that anybody gets out of reading. I mean, what’s more exciting than getting to find out something about characters you’ve just met or reading on about someone’s life or anything! There are books out there on just about any subject, and they’re easy to find. So what I enjoyed about reading 14 years ago when I was first learning how to do so, is still what keeps the excitement there for me now.