Literacy Narrative Student: Abbos Sotiboldiev Webster University in Tashkent writ 1010: The Craft of College Writing uu sp 2022 Instructor: Alimova Kamola Assignment Due Date: Week #5 Lifelong journey

Literacy Narrative

Student: Abbos Sotiboldiev
Webster University in Tashkent
WRIT 1010: The Craft of College Writing UU SP 2022
Instructor: Alimova Kamola
Assignment Due Date: Week #5

Lifelong journey
Only literacy can connects people who lives in different times. Books, manuscripts and letters conducted the whole wisdom of our ancestors in their lifetimes and shared all their life lessons to their descendants, which are the contemporary people and the next generations. The curiosity and interest to learn the world around us, made me to know the meaning, besides colorful illustrations in books that placed the shelf of my grandfather also. As a five-year-old boy, I was somehow literate by reading with fairy tales of my pride, which is my nation. Through continuing this journey, I tend to become familiar with the thoughts of numerous wise people by their masterpieces. I divided my literacy acquiring process into 3 parts: started from learning Uzbek alphabet fourteen years ago, curiosity to reading books in my high-school year and the English language acquisition. Probably in the future I will follow many points to the list throughout my whole existence in this life.
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Becoming Forever Free
Once social-reformer of America, Frederick Douglass said, “Once you learn to read, you will become forever free”. When I was five years old, my mother preferred to spend her time to teach Uzbek alphabet and reading simple words and was my first teacher and I am so grateful to her to do so. I vividly remember that in this time I attended to kindergarten and so actively participated in every lessons there. After one month learning the reading in Uzbek and being crazy about reading tales that are full of colorful illustrations, I totally lost my interest for the activities and friends in my kindergarten and stopped to attending there in the last year. Our house is still full of technical books, novels, Uzbek folklore, fairy tales, and encyclopedias. I usually spent my hours to wondering about the stories and characters in easy folklore. As a child who dreams to become hero, I lived in the world of adventures, felt pain, pride, honor, boldness as the main characters, imitated to speak through using their phrases and words as written in the books. My mother recalls at that time me as “a reader who reads lines from left to right side and sometimes right to left, if he wanted” and also says “he really enjoyed to do so” to my sister. My mother helped me to make big stride in my whole life.

In my first year of school although I was full of passion to learn, it was also full of memories that I is unpleasant to reminisce. My teacher was cruel and punished by stabbing needles to pupils’ hands who has not good handwriting. When I recall, I can clearly hear the moaning of my classmates and myself. Moreover, she judged me and my calligraphy more than my other classmates. Now I think that because of being an excellent student in all other subjects, my teacher wanted me to have better calligraphy; instead, she connected terrible emotions and memories to writing in general. I was only good at note taking and summarizing in my whole school years and never wrote essays or writing assignments on time. The interesting point is that the root of this problem was not lack of ideas or laziness to write, instead my attitude towards my calligraphy.

According to the Oxford dictionary, literacy directly means “the ability to read and write”. I acquired speed-reading and mnemonic-memorization skills in the last summer vacation in my school years. Only taking two months for exercising to improve learning quality, proliferated my academic life and created more productive time than I have ever had before. It was the springboard in all areas in my life and totally changed myself as a lifelong learner. The books that threaten students by their tomes or thickness were my friends. I enjoy reading classics, and novels. First book I read with speed-reading was “The red and the black” by Stendhal. Only taking 3 days to complete reading this book was great achievement for me. The competitiveness inside my heart ignite the ambition that caused me to become the avid reader in my school, and I got this title by reading every single book in my grandfather’s shelf and representing them in every week literature events. Probably, if he would be still alive at this time, he was proud of me for reading all his 36 books is a short span of time. On the other hand, these masterpieces of Russian and Europe literature influenced me as a person more than any other factors. I observed and learnt character traits such as boldness, hardworking, integrity, and morality from these books and applied these qualities in myself daily. Nowadays, I understand “literate person” as a person who reads and writes regularly, instead of fallacy that describes him as a person who is able to read and write.

Goethe once said, “As many languages you know, as many times you are a human being”. Indeed, my purpose to learn English was getting into any university. From beginning of the last academic year at school, I took English seriously and put everything I had into learning English. By taking online courses, I reached my grammar to the pre-intermediate level in one month. When I went to study center, I obsessed to learn more and to increase the pace of my learning while my peer group enjoyed and tried to cheat the exams there. Then I understood I could not accomplish more with these lazy losers. My passion to reading overwhelmed in learning acquisition also and I started to read books of Penguin Reader. Started from beginner for every level of proficiency I completed reading 10 books. In order to be more advantageous, I bought the audiotapes of these books to increase my listening ability. I spent my days to reading novels, reading for learning English and memorizing vocabulary words besides, 4-hour school life. It seems monotonous, if you cannot enjoy reading. Especially using mnemonic techniques gave more fun into learning. I imagined exaggerated visualization of the new word I should memorize, and always connected it with its association in Uzbek. I have found that it is the best way to learn vocabulary. Instead of picking up individual words, I learnt collocations and phrases that gives more meaning and easily decoded in my imagination. I passed two seasons: fall and winter in that way and became more comfortable on my comprehension in English. My acquaintance-sister Gulhida Tuychieva, who is currently sophomore student at Webster University, prepared me for the IELTS exam. First, I took online mock exam with her and deciphered the typing on keyboard is better for me instead of writing on paper in English. She interpreted the structures for listening and reading exams; however the most important point is that I discover new skill in myself, which is writing. I feel more comfortable and more relaxed while I type the keys on my laptop and before I have never sensed myself better on writing essays. After four month of training with her, I could keep conversations with others and describe my thought in papers confidently. During learning process, I compared my native language with English and identified their key distinctions and identities. I somehow proved myself that smart hard work pays more off than shallow long paced learning in language acquisition.

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People or events around us always influence us. There are plenty people that affected me on my academic success and literacy. The first influencer was my mother. She taught the basics and inspired me to go into the world of wisdom, the world of books. Besides my grandfather, the authors of books in my “read list” also have a huge impact on my growth as a human. I love Alisher Naoiy for sharing his wisdom in his “Khayrat-ul-Abror”, Machiavelli and Dale Carnegie for giving the best advice for interpersonal communication, Leo Tolstoy for philosophical ideas in “Father Sergius”, Lermontov for giving me a role model by Pechorin as an ironic, intellectual, brave man. Benjamin Franklin for his autobiography to make me imitate him and learn his habits and it will be a long list to continue to mention all writers and characters to shape my worlds. In other word, books always can be good mentor, whether the situation is good or bad.
There is no doubt that learning English as my second language unleashed my potential as a student, as a good reader and in all ways of my life. Through reading books that have-not translated in local languages, shaped my view toward this rapid world and as a person of twenty-first century. Moreover, through overcoming obstacles I discover my new skill, which is writing and understood that I am not naturally a bad writer after I got 6 from the IELTS exam in writing section.
To conclude, I am going with more pace in the journey that I took as a five years old kid. No matter whatever happens, I keep curiosity, learn new skills, and accelerate my writing, reading all the time. I learn many things from books and observe them in every person I talk with. Books gave me inspiration, leadership, integrity and shaped my character more than other factors. As George Martin says, “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one.”

References:
George, R. R. M.(2013) A Song of Ice and Fire series. A Dance with Dragons (495p), Bantam Books: An Imprint of Random House Publishing Group.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. (n.d.). AZQuotes.com. Retrieved February 08, 2022, from AZQuotes.com Web site: https://www.azquotes.com/quote/430487

JSTOR. (2012). Counterpoints, 406, 1–4, published by Peter Lang AG. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/42981613