Antonio Johnson 

Freshman Composition

Maxwell Schnuer

It was mainly in school when I first learned how to read and write. It all started when we would read short fiction stories and then finding the main idea, meaning what the story was all about. My handwriting wasn’t the best and at first, I thought it was because I’m left-handed while almost everyone else is right-handed, but it got better overtime. The benefit I gained from finding the main idea was that I managed to read more carefully and end up finding nearly every if not all-important details. The next part of reading and writing I learned was making paragraphs. At first it seemed hard to me because I wasn’t sure how I can have multiple sentences focusing on the same subject. I then got the hang of it due to being able to read carefully and using evidence from the important details I have found. Because of that I was able to write essays, using the same methods I learned in the past.

One form of writing I mostly prefer is texting. In my opinion, any type of writing that is online is faster and less likely to make errors. This is why I send lots of emails and when doing that, they don’t have to be too formal. 

            There was this one instance in particular when the objective I had was to write an essay and make a presentation about it. It could be any subject, so I chose to talk about violent video games and how impactful it was towards the younger people that play it. First, I would make an introduction about why video games have gotten so popular over the years, and then do research about the effects it has on people. Once I’m done researching, I would write about what I found. I made an argument that video games that are more violent and action based are more entertaining for the younger generation and therefore, those types of games are being played most commonly. When doing the presentation I would do the same steps as the essay, from the beginning which is the introduction about video games, to the end which is the citations. I was a little nervous about the presentation because I’m not used to talking so much in front of a bunch of people, particularly when it’s about my work but once I knew what to say I quickly managed to adapt.

One meaningful moment I had in my language experience was taking Spanish class in high school. Going into that class, I was not expecting to do good because all my life I only know English. We started off small learning the small words and phrases like “gusta” which means “like”. Then we started learning how to use sentences such as “Como te llamas”, meaning “what is your name”. I started to understand it more and overall had less doubts about being able to speak Spanish. I wanted to learn different languages so I can understand everyone I socialize with no matter what culture.

Overall, the more I went to school, the better I became when it comes to reading and writing which made me more confident about doing it.