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Around age 2, I began using to understand the syntax of English and spoke in simple 2-3 word sentences.
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This was around the time that I began to use words to represent different items. I was about 15 months old when I began using words that were intelligible to others outside of my home.
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During my preschool years there was a huge increase in my vocabulary and I began to understand that words were symbols used to communicate. I developed a more clear understanding of feelings words and how to communicate my emotions. I also began writing, first beginning with letter-like symbols, then writing my name, and then creating strings of letter that represented physical things or thoughts.
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During this time, I was in school learning how to decode and encode words, using the phonics skills that were taught. Phonics lessons focused on breaking apart texts, while reading for comprehension was used mainly when the teacher lead the reading lessons. I also leaned to encode words using the skills taught during phonics. I completed worksheets and wrote down my ideas, although samples of my early writing did not express my ideas in detail.
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Around third or fourth grade, I was no longer recieving explicit phonics instruction and most of the reading time in school was used to pull information from texts.
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From middle school through high school I took 6 years of Spanish. Because I read a lot, I had a lot of English vocabulary, which made it easier to find cognates in English for Spanish words. Als, because I went to a religious school during my elementary years, I spent a lot of time reading the Bible, which was written in old English. This made it easier to understand the syntax of Spanish and relate Spanish words to cognate used in the Bible but not used in modern English.
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During my second grade year, my parents bought me a typewriter. I must have expressed interest in writing or shown a propensity toward writing. This was a hallmark moment for me because I spent a lot of time using my typewriter to create stories. My father said that I would just type away. Most of the words I typed were written phonetically, but may not have been spelled correctly.
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In high school, I took a course called Latin Connections. This course helped me decode words, not for reading, but for comprehension. During this course, we explored latin, as well as a few Roman, roots that are used in conventional English. This course made it easier for me when I came across words that I did not know in technical texts. It also helped anchor the concepts I learned in Spanish as many Spanish words hae Latin roots.
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In 11th grade I had the BEST English teacher EVER!!!!!! Mr. Ray taught me how to speak in an active voice and eliminate overuse of the verb to be. We could only use to be, in any form, twice in an essay. This was monumental. He also introduced me to fallacies, which made me way more critical of how advertisements companies coerce people to buy products.
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During the summer of 1997, I attended a summer program at a local college. The program boasted that students could test into college level classes which they would take, for free, throughout the summer. The college placed EVERYONE in remedial courses, regardless of the placement test results. I, along with a few other students, from wrote letters and emails advocating to be placed in English 101. I knew that Mr. Ray had done a great job with me and my status was not remedial. I recieved an A.
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I believe that through reading and writing you get an opportunity to learn more about others and the world around you, as well as share your experiences with others. For this reason, I love reading and writing. As a tutor, I realize that I enjoy learning random facts with my students that I had not learned as a student. Having this information makes it easier to emerse myself in conversations on a variety of topics and helps me expand my social circle.
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I had positve experiences with reading and writing during elementary school. I do not believe that it was because of my teachers but more of a combination of my own personality and the experiences I had in my household. My father always told me stories growing up which influenced my love for stories. When I was punished, books and writing utensils were not taken away from me so I was able to forget my worries in a good story, whether it was my own or someone else's.
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I have had positive experiences with reading in college, however, with writing I try to be as concise as possible in order to get the point across. Many times I have felt my professors were more concerned with length than whether the writing shows that I truly understood what I read. This always forces me to add a bunch of fluff to my writing in order to meet a length requirement. I dont like that and feel it is a waste of my time. Overall, I have become a better writer through my college career