MacIsaac 1

Ayden MacIsaac

Professor Alexander

English 1010

9 September 2022

Multimodal Literacy Narrative

Summer reading is a tedious task in which every individual is required to take a part of

their summer vacation and read a book because there is a chance it will be tested. Most of the

time, it requires an individual to go out of their way and purchase the book due to limitations in

libraries around them. Since every child around is scavenging for the same book as wild animals

are for food, there tends to be less effort made in searching and more made in purchases that will

leave the book discarded once read. Making a book required in school is what caused me to hate

reading. No disrespect to the authority of the authors each school teaches from, but to make a

valid remark on the absurdity of it all.

At an early age I learned the arrangement of the alphabet through the simple “ABC”

song. From then on, the jingle, programmed in our youthful minds, was used once again when I

learned to write it out on paper. After that, we were taught to print our names out and, in that

moment, dream of what else we could create with the arrangement of letters. That was what

kindergarten was for me: learning the alphabet and being read storybooks.
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Transitioning to first grade, I was taught spelling words and vocabulary words. I hated

these because I was a decent speller despite every word, I did have wrong. I began thinking,

“Why do I have to do the same thing each week?” and “What words are they now?” Then

second grade started. I believed the pattern of the past would surely stay in the past, but I

suddenly came to the realization that I was wrong! New year, new teacher, same thing. The thing

with being a grade higher was that I now was learning what those funny looking things at the end

of each row of words was! “.” this was what my teacher called a period and “!” this an

exclamation point.

It was not until around third grade that sentence structure was really known, and of

course often misspelled, to most of us. That was the very year I thought I wanted to be an author

myself, unknown to the rules of literature and blinded by ambition. I recall authoring a little book

filled with imagination and structure only understood to my 8-year-old self. I also began reading

like crazy and loved the escape it gave me in a parallel world unlike anything I have ever

encountered

Then fifth grade happened! That was the year I was first required to read a book and

hated that I did not pick it out myself. The cycle continued up until the present day and I could

not escape the vortex of interest less reading. There was something about being forced to read

something that did not spark an interest in my mind that really took the enjoyment out of reading.
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Middle school was about learning parts of speech and literary elements from a bunch of

dead people. If that does not scream boring, there must be a screw loose in your head because

that is not my idea of “fun!” I moved to Tennessee right before the start of sixth grade, so the

curriculum did not match up and I realized that I never learned what nouns, pronouns, verbs,

adjectives, or adverbs prior to middle school. I felt a little behind in English, but I still

maintained an “A”

Ninth grade taught me how to write 5 paragraph essays properly, introduced the idea of

MLA format, and told me I should not use “I” when writing. Tenth grade I got marked up for

plagiarism, which I did not know it would be a critical subject. Eleventh grade and Twelfth grade

contained everything from previous years and then I applied for college.
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Being currently enrolled at Middle Tennessee State University, I am learning that “I” is

okay and have my first big project. I was asked to write about the process of literacy in my life. I

really hope I can figure out what to write about! Learning that literacy is free to everyone helps

me because being taught one correct way made me feel incomplete as a writer. Now that college

is allowing me to explore the means of literature, I feel as though writing is not as bad as it used

to be and its okay to be myself when writing a piece of work. I will continue to use previous

methods because they are what I practiced the most, but now I have the option to do whatever

my heart desires.