Matthew Realon Professor Raymond UwRrT-1103-£02 1 September 2015 Reading, Writing, Speaking, and Living Asso0n as | was born my parents wanted to hear my frst words come out of my mouth. They ‘would talkto.me with sly expressions on their face, read me bed time stores, but all! ell liked was the Pictures, and try to spell words out for me in hope that | would speak. Well that day came when my book His oe doliaazed ‘momwas reading me Sammy and Matt, My brother was there with us because the book had his name in "t-and he loved hearing stories about himself even if they were fictional. Every time a part with Sammy ‘ame up he would repeat the sentence, but he would say his name with as much power as a six year old could. After 3 few minutes of my mom reading, | blurted out the word Sammy, which pleased my brother that my frst word was his name. After that, I started to say more and more words based off of Y movies and the snacks | did and didn lke. My parents started making me read 30 minutes a day book prrioe 35 Got older and | became very fond of Magic Tree Houses My brother and my parents constantly Pushed me to read more and more every year, which became a catalyst to make me a strong and confident reader. in=— o¢ Ihadlfrevious Yeachers teach me how to use grammar, bun learned 1 gradé)almost everything they taught me was wrong. My teacher Ms. Stone was very passionate about grammar and she made her classroom almost like a boot camp. She made a grammar quiz every week and our exam was composed almost entirely of grammar. | started out almost failing the class, but then we had a talk. She said, “Matthew, | know you can do better than what you're giving me for these quizzes what is the ones and shocked | replied, “I don’t exactly know what the problem is, but | think | just need to do more practice with you.” After that, Ms. Stone took me under her wing and I went after school twice 72 week and studied with her. We would find sentences out of people’s papers in the past from her classRealon a and break them down. | learned all my rules about commas, colons, semi-colons, Parentheses, and 4 Periods from her, and now | fee! confident about my ability to use grammar in my writings. <— nthe coldest room throughout all of Alexander Graham middle school, Ms, ‘aught me al! needed to know about how to compose my essays. For our 7* grade Project we had to create a paper on a disease in and African nation. Ms. Hickey offered us the chance to send her in our PaPers as many times as we wanted to and she would go over them and tell us what we would need to change. | thought, “This will be easy. ll geta few tips from Ms. Hickey and then Vl get an A" Little did | Know, | was a horrible writer. Within thirty minutes of my email, my teacher responded to me and ‘rossed out everything except my name and the date. | became so confused when | gott back and | was Pretty angry about it. | went after class the next day and talked to her and instead of me giving her a Piece of my mind, she told me exactly how bad my paper was without any sugar coating, She broke down everything that was wrong with my paper and we spent three hours recreating my paper into something she found bearable to read. That night | went over it with my dad and he wasn’t too fond of itelther, so we spent an additional two hours until he gave up on me. For the next week my dad, Ms Hickey, and | spent almost three hours each day working on my project until the due date came. lended Up with an A on the paper, but that was one of the most soul crushing, heart breaking, and mind killing experiences of my life, After these instances with my family and teachers, | have become a decent writer, reader, and speaker, but definitely not a good one.