j mottola lit n arr talk back

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M o t t o l a | 1

Joseph Mottola

Professor Jane Rieman

English 1101

September 19, 2012

Overall I think my paper is coming along pretty good. I have reread my paper about

three times and I feel like each time I read it, I can add and change about twenty different things. I think

my paper flows pretty good. I took a few most memorable moments and went into depth about them.

Honestly, I do not know what else I can do to make my paper any better. What would you change in my

paper? Did you enjoy reading my paper? If not, what should I do to make the reader enjoy it? Did you like

the way I incorporated my pictures on each page of my essay or do you think I should have had a

separate page for just pictures?

The Truth of Reading and Writing between the Lines

At the age of three, my parents decided that it was time for their toddler to write his first

word, Joseph. Although ineligible for an adult to read the writing, as if reading a foreign

language, it was pure perfection in the eyes of a toddler whom wanted to engage themselves in

everything and follow in the footsteps of his mother and father. After learning to write the few

letters my parents taught me before starting kindergarten, learning to read was the next best thing

that could happen. Although reading books for me did not start until kindergarten, as a toddler I

would ask all of my family members to read everything to me whether it was a book or a sign on

the road. This prepared me for the joys of reading independently. As a child your imagination is

very strong and when I began to read books it was as if the book would come to life and I was

one of the characters in the story. I usually read the books that my teacher would send home with

me, but when she sent home one of the books from the series of Biscuit , I was ready to read for

three hours rather than the required thirty. Being able to transport myself in to the story made

reading a hobby for me as a young child and it would make going to the library very



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amusing.The library has such a wide collection of books and I remember wanting to check out

every book I picked up. I remember being excited to get my first library card because I felt like I

was being given a pass into another world that I could escape into. As a young child, I was able

to engage in a book without having to worry about writing a three page essay or answer

comprehension questions that did no justification of what I knew once so ever. I believe that this

is why, nowadays, I don’t engage in books like I use to and I have no desire to read

anymore.Little did I see that learning to read and write would come with profound memories that

would teach me about myself and about the world in which I live in!

Kindergarten began my long journey of learning complex words, sentence structures, and

grammar rules to create a series of paragraphs that would later become my college essays. I

remember being excited to go school so that I could practice learning to read and write. One

thing that would excite me about school in kindergarten was going into class and my teacher,

Mrs. Andrews, would have a booklet of theletter thatwe were going to be learning that week

ready for us to explore. Even though I knew some letters by the time kindergarten hit, I felt like

these practice books gave me an opportunity to broaden my reading and writing horizons. The

first quarter of kindergarten was hard for me because I was not grasping reading and writing like

all the other children were. Although I knew some letters

and some words, my teacher was still highly concerned

and decided that it was best to meet with my parents. In

doing so my parents, grandma, and Mrs. Andrews pushed

me a lot to practice my reading and writing so that I could

be prepared for the first grade and it’s endeavors with

reading and writing. After having to practice so much, by



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the second six weeks of kindergarten, I had grasped reading and writing successfully and Mrs.

Andrews put on my progress report to the left that I was reading very well and writing numbers

and words in a variety of ways. Kindergarten was also when I was assigned my first “writing

project.” My class had read a book called Flat Stanly by Jeff Brown and my teacher, Mrs.

Andrews, decided to base our lesson for the week on the main character in the book, Flat

Stanley. She decided to give us our own Flat Stanley and we had to send him away on a

“vacation.” Our duty was to write a formal letter to a family member about our Flat Stanley and

then we had to send the letter, along with Flat Stanley, away for his week-long “vacation.” It was

then up to our family members to write about everything Flat Stanley did and to send him back

along with a letter talking about his new experiences. Doing this project opened one of the many

doors of writing for me and I learned the joy of composing letters which I still hold to this day.

In the third grade my class had paired up with a kindergarten class to take part in the

reading buddy program. I remember being excited and nervous at the same time to take part in

this program. I was nervous because I had to teach a new born reader how to read and I was

excited because I would be able to teach someone my

skills and techniques on how to read. I remember being

assigned to a mini me, meaning Joey was his name.

When I first meet him and sat him down to read, he

struggled to get from one word to another and to read

a full sentence without asking for help. Then and there,

I saw I had my work cut out for me and my goal was to

have this child to be reading by the time the reading

buddy program expired. So we met our reading buddies every Wednesday to help them learn the



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value of reading. I decided the best book to read was Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin

Jr. and John Archambault which is an alphabet book about the letters in the alphabet told in a

rhyme. In my struggles of reading, this book helped me to be able to move on to a wider variety

of readings. This book was the base of my success in reading. I made a decision to read this book

to Joey and doing so this book became one of Joey’s favorite reads. Every time we met up on

Wednesday to practice reading, he would want to read Chicka Chicka Boom Boom and so we

did. By the middle of the semester, Joey would walk into the classroom and want to read to me.

After the reading buddy program was over Joey and I both learned something; he learned to read

and I learned that I was a pretty good teacher. With this experience, I was proud of myself

because I had taught someone one of the most important and challenging concepts needed in

everyday life and that was to read.

When I was in the fourth and fifth grade, my school required everybody from the

first grade on up to participate in a program called, The AR reading program. This program

required students to read books and then take a computerized quiz on it. With the quiz, it

determined how well you comprehended the book and each time you gained or lost points

depending on how well or bad

you did on the menacing quiz.

At certain stages in the

growing points, you were

recognized on the morning

announcements and honored

by receiving a shiny pin that

would tell “how good of a



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reader you were.” The AR program motivated me to read more so that I could gain lots of points

on the quizzes and earn that shiny pin that I worked so hard for. Also when I was in the fourth

and fifth grade I was given the position by the head librarian to be one of the many student

library assistants. Engaging in my new position, I had learned how to use the Dewey decimal

system and how to check out books. Being around books all the time gave me a lot of motivation

to read. Putting the books away on the shelf, I would always want to read the summaries on the

back of each book and see if it interested me or not. Doing this I would get carried away from

what I was supposed to be doing and once I caught myself in the act I noticed myself walking to

the library checkout table with the maximum number of books you could check out ready to take

home to explore!

Once I got into middle school, English became a

little more difficult, but that did not stop me from wanting to

engage myself in learning the next level of my journey in

English. My seventh and eighth grade years hosted some of

the most memorable moments of my English career. One

very memorable moment I had was in the seventh grade

when my English teacher, Ms. Swiger, assigned the class to

take on putting together aMr. Potato head fashion show. The

assignment was to dress a Mr. Potato head figurine up and

write a descriptive paragraph about the way he looks. For

example one line from my script went, “Fluffy’s pretty pink nose was made up by no other than

Rudolph the red nose reindeer.” We had to recite our paragraph to the class as if we were

reading a script in a fashion show. I enjoyed this assignment because I had to write while using



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my five senses: smell, touch, taste, sight, and sound to capture my audience’s attention. The

fashion show assignment taught me a lot about using detail when I write. When writing a paper, I

always refer to what I learned from Mr. Potato head walking down the runway in his “hot pink

woven basket designed by Bugs Bunny.” After my exciting experiences in the seventh grade, it

was then off to the eighth grade and English became one of my favorite subjects.

Eighth grade started off with excitement due to it being my last year in middle school.

During this course of a year, my English teacher, Mrs. Hentz, played an important role in my

life. Not only was she enthusiastic about teaching English, she was also a very interesting

women. I wish I could be writing her literacy

memoir due to all the traveling teaching English

had taken her. But back to my memoir, you could

tell Mrs. Hentz enjoyed writing and that’s not

because she was an author of her own book. I

remember her telling the class she wrote her own

book and me and one of my fellow classmates

decided that we going to try and write and publish

our own book, which turned out to be a failure due

to the fact we were thirteen and couldn’t decide on

a strict story line. It was the second week of school

when Mrs. Hentz introduced our year-long project and that was writing our own autobiography.

With this project, I got a chance to recall old memories from when I was younger, talk about

where I came from, and talk about my future goals. “Researching” myself motivated me to want

to write more because it gave me a chance to see who I was and how I became Joseph Denis



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Mottola. When I look back at my autobiography, it makes me laugh because my writing is so

much more different now than it was four years ago. It’s as if my writing matured while I began

to mature.

In the same year, another incident took place that would change my thought process of

the different ways people speak. I remember sitting in my math class going over the previous

night’s homework and my math teacher, Mr. Lambrix, was trying to explain a problem by using

potatoes as an example. Mr. Lambrix was from the west, so the way he said potato was different

from the way this girl, Lindsey Walker, a fellow classmate, had pronounced it. She told him he

was pronouncing it wrong and tried to tell him “the correct” way to say. Mr. Lambrix was not

too pleased and replied “You may say potato but I say potato (spoken with a long a.) Everyone

was taught a different way to pronounce words because everyone is not from the same origin.”

With this incident, I realized that people speak different ways and I should not judge the way one

person says something because they might have not been taught to say it the same way I was.

Although I was an outsider on the incident, this experience relates to the concepts explored in

Linda Christensen’s essay on Teaching Standard English: Whose Standard? In her essay,

Christensen stated “Over the years my English teachers pointed out all of my errors- the usage

errors I inherited from my mother’s Bandon, Oregon, dialect, the spelling errors I overlooked,

the fancy words I used incorrectly.” (103) This quote shows that people all come from a different

place and learn a different dialect. My encounter is an example of this quote displayed in a math

class from a student to a teacher rather than in an English class from a teacher to a student. No

matter what the situation or who you are, peo ple are going to pick out others flaws whom don’t

speak like them and try and tell them “ the correct way to speak.”No one should be judged on the

way the talk or write because that is who they are. People should be able to use the dialect they



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feel most comfortable with in a conversation or in a paper. No one is perfect and no one speaks

perfect English. What is perfect English?

After attending three years of middle school, it was time for me to begin a new chapter in

my life. High school began and the writing and reading materials required to graduate high

school became more in depth and complex. Writing papers had to be written in a certain format

or they were not accepted and the books that were assigned had no interest in my eyes once so

ever. I remember in my junior year of high school, I was required to read a book called The

Sound of the Furyby William Faulkner ,which I could not tell you what it was about because I

did not and would never read this book. I tried to read the first ten pages of it but I did not

comprehend one thing it was saying and it seemed as if it was written in the stone ages. Another

incident that took place in my junior year was when my teacher, Mrs. Zavanut, was a Hitler at

grading papers. She did not have one positive comment to put on anyone’s papers. It’s as if she

saw the paper as a chance to chop it up into shreds and make her students look like complete

morons. One paper in particular, I had spelled something wrong which of course is a common

error in a lot of papers. My teacher, Mrs. Zvanut, decided it would be appropriate to underline

the word and put “this is how you spell it, duh!” Receiving this kind of degrading comment on

one simple paper, especially from a teacher, really upset me and made me drop out of her AP

English III class.

During high school I decided to take Spanish both because I wanted to learn a

new language and because I was required to participate in two semesters of the same language in

order to graduate high school. I chose Spanish over the other languages because the culture

interests me and in the long run could help me, due to the fact that Spanish is the second most

spoken language in the United States. I enjoyed learning Spanish so much that I took an extra



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Spanish class in high school which was not required. Learning to read, write, and speak a new

language was very fun to and it also took a lot of time and dedication to know what I was saying,

writing and comprehending. Learning Spanish made me want to read and write more Spanish

because I was challenging myself

to read and write in a whole other

language that was not my own.

Spanish has a lot of different

grammar rules and sentence

structures from English and you

have to conjugate words with the

correct endings. Now for a quick

Spanish lesson: in English if you

were going to say, I go, in Spanish

you would take the verb,ver, which

means,to go, and then conjugate it with the correct ending which would turn out to

be,voy,meaning, I go, in Spanish. At first I thought learning Spanish was going to be difficult but

it turned out to be very easy for me and I really enjoyed learning it. In my Spanish one class my

teacher would give us stories to read in Spanish that we would have to translate into English. I

enjoyed this because it gave me the chance to practice reading and comprehending a story in

another language. Learning to read and write in Spanish has motivated me by having a goal,

which is to read a whole chapter book in Spanish in the next year. Learning to read and write

Spanish in high school has actually inspired me to take up Spanish as minor in college.



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Throughout my life I have had many memorable moments throughout my literacy

career. Everything that I have experienced with reading and writing has shaped me one way or

another and has helped me get to the point I am in life now. Without those horrible comments

from my English teachers or those fun and interesting reading and writing projects, I would not

be the reader or writer I am to this day. I am glad that I have had a chance to be able to write a

literacy memoir because some people in the world do not get the chance to learn how to be

literate human beings. I am more than happy to have been given the chance to be literate and to

have gone through my good and bad moments in my journey of reading and writing.

Works Cited

Christensen, Linda M. "Teaching Standard English: Whose Standard?" Essays on Writing.Eds.

Lizbeth Bryant and Heather Clark. New York: Longman, 2008. 101-109.

Joey,

Great job! Again, it’s wonderful how you include those literacy artifacts., I’m very

impressed that you can still find such things from so long ago! They really add to the paper.

You’ll see that I suggest you pull some direct quotes from them in places to make them more

than just pictures, but where you use them to illustrate your point.



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Your literacy memoir is quite rich, and you have a lot of stories that show what you are

saying. As you can see from my marginal comments, I often suggest for you to pull back from

your own story a bit to look at the larger forces at work on your access to literacy — the way your

school showed how it valued reading, the way your family acted as literacy sponsors, who whose

the books to be included in the AR program etc. So, read through those comments and see where

you may be able to expand your look here. The highlighted areas are places that you need to read

aloud and edit.

j mottola lit n arr talk back

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