Abraham Zambrano

Professor Al-Tabaa
ENGL 1311
July 18, 2014
Learning from our Mistakes
I used to adore reading a lot of books when I was little. Back in elementary school I
would read a lot of books from the school library, ranging from immense fiction books such as
the Harry Potter novels through real-world facts and statistic books like the Guinness World
Records. These books not only helped increase my literacy and knowledge, but also helped me to
learn how to read and speak English fluently. Born and raised fluent in Spanish, literacy in
general has guided me aside on how to understand the basic concepts and fundamentals of
English, and as a result, it had shown me many paths that I could take to advance more into my
school career. Not only did literacy helped me learn a new language, but also it guided me to
know the different segments when it comes to writing papers for school, and learning from some
of my flaws that used to (and still somewhat) distract me from moving on to express my ideas
onto a report.
Literacy had helped me go forward throughout life as I read more and more books,
paying attention to every word in a story. This so-called reading rush had made me eager to
learn a new language in order to understand the plot and learn how to speak it at the same time.
When I was a third-grader, I started reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone because I was
curious to learn the difference between the novel and the movie. After reading the next couple of
the Harry Potter series, I learned how to read and understand English for a sliver, and over time,
Ive started speaking it a lot more than before that in the beginning of sixth grade, the school has
decided to put me into an English-speaking class exclusively. Reading those books had moved
me forward to speaking, writing, and understanding English through life, as I had to be fluent in
it during middle and high school, and now it has to be applied throughout college, even though I
still speak Spanish for informal purposes.
My knowledge based on my prior readings had encouraged me to move forward in life by
writing a paper of my point of view about any topic that is given and express throughout it. Like
everyone that went to high school, a student like myself had learned how to write a five-
paragraph essay and express his/her opinion or side of the argument based on the topic.
However, I wasnt the best at managing my time, and planning on writing a five-paragraph essay
was a distraught for me because I thought it was time-wasting and seemingly distracting onto
finishing the paper. As a result, I would write about my topic along the way and only followed
the essay structure, such as the flow between each key segment throughout the paper (like the
anecdote and thesis statement afterwards in the introductory paragraph). Even though writing an
essay had made me feel a bit stressful to finish them, it helped me in a way to finish them in a
certain time limit as fast as possible, since in the future any timed essay exam is possible for any
class, and this situation that I made through in high school had made me learn the lesson onto
attempting to not do it again.
Continuing from my last point, even though literacy helped me advance up to standards
lately, reading is not my strongest subject to move on beyond the limits currently. One main
reason was I lost interest on reading over time. Ever since I left elementary and moved on to
middle school, I would pick up a book, and not finish all of it and instead return it back, losing
my conscience of understanding the plot of a story. Along with any distractions, I was struggling
to even read a paragraph at the very beginning, and I had to constantly re-read it over and over
until I have the words scarred on my memory, but after struggling with the next paragraph, I
gave up and closed the book. It wasnt until junior year that made me force to read anything in
order to do assignments such as short answers and essays. Even though it was hell to go through
the whole year in AP English III, it made me learn to write better and understand the flowing of
an essay by expressing any ideas that I could come up with as I write.
In conclusion, literacy, whether reading and/or writing, has influenced me into becoming
a fluent writer, as it had helped me understand the concepts of writing an essay, regardless of
which type, and learn my prior mistakes in order to become a better reader.