SW "Shitty First Drafts"

   After having read this article I can relate to the kind of mentality that this writer has. He mentions that while writing he often experiences a lot of pressure and pretty much writers block. Something that I often find myself doing. Sometimes walking around or even watching tv until an idea comes to mind. He also includes that a good start is to have a shitty first draft. He bases the final draft off of that shitty first draft. I kind of use the same method, except I try to actually make it sound good on that first draft, and then I just make it flow from then on.

Draft 3

Jose Ramirez

20 February 2014

English 1A

Literacy Narrative

            My name is Jose Julio Ramirez and I was born in Mexico, but moved to the states as an infant and have been raised here in Sacramento. Throughout the majority of my life, my family and I have lived in some pretty rough neighborhoods here in Sacramento. Since the neighborhoods that I have lived in were so infested by crime and violence, my parents found school to be my brother and I's safe haven. With that being said, my parents made school our number one priority and made sure we gave 100% effort academically. From that point on my parents and I placed high standards on my education and made it a goal to go to college. That is how I ended up here; now pursuing my dream of graduating college.

            Throughout my short lived life, reading, writing, and I have had a love-hate relationship. From the time I was in the fourth grade to present day, teachers, different academic standards, and being a minority have impacted my interest in reading and writing. What I mean by “being a minority” is that social and cultural issues have shaped my understanding and view on reading and writing. All of these different events and people have shaped my view on literacy throughout my life.

            Being Mexican, and having almost every single family member be Mexican, was the main reason that the first language I learned how to speak was Spanish. Spanish was my primary language that I used to communicate with my family. As I grew up my brother, uncle, and cousin were the main people that helped me learn how to speak English. Time went on and once I started going to school, I learned how to read, write, and speak English properly. I never found writing or reading in Spanish useful so I never bothered to learn how to do either. English, to me, seemed a lot easier when it came to writing and reading, so I took more interest in that than in Spanish. To this day I mainly use Spanish when talking with my parents or when I talk with other family members, but there are times when I do regret not taking the time to properly learn how to read and write in Spanish. Before kindergarten started, I was fortunate enough to know both Spanish and English.

           In the fourth grade I read this book called Danger in the Desert by Terri Fields, that would change my opinion about books for a while. This book fascinated me and really became the gateway for my interest in books. After reading this book I no longer felt that reading books was only used to learn. I looked beyond that and realized that some books were created for pure entertainment. From then to about the eighth grade reading was mostly a requirement but I actually enjoyed it. As for writing, I didn’t really have interest for it at the time.

            Once I became a freshman in high school my feelings and interest for reading and writing changed once again. At this point, outside reading was no longer a requirement but an option or so called hobby. The only required reading was assigned books or text books. Being primarily focused on reading those books I didn’t pick up reading out of school. My joy for reading slowly started to fade until my junior year of high school, when our assigned reading was to read The Great Gatsby. I found the book to be really interesting and even thought about starting to read out of class more often. Unfortunately, this book couldn't spark up my interest for reading and I no longer found reading to be fun. As for writing, I gained a bit more interest in it, but still despised it. Since most of my writing at the time was research papers or reflections of the assigned reading I found it to be just as boring. The one thing that made me gain more interest in writing was that I was good at it, often getting A’s and B’s on major writing assignments. This portion of my life really influenced how I felt about reading and writing. I think that if teachers would have chosen more interesting books to read I would have actually enjoyed reading and the writing assignments that came after.

            As I have mentioned, I don’t really like reading and writing for the reasons stated above. Although I may not like them I do find them to be very important in our everyday lives. My parents have always told me to never forget how to speak Spanish or to never forget my roots. But, they also could not stress enough on how important English is for a minority like myself. They have always wanted me to be successful and in a way they wanted me to prove to the world that minorities are just as capable of going to college or finding a good job. With that in mind I always found reading and writing to be important and essential even if I did not enjoy them. Besides my parents I felt pressured by society to be more dominant in the English language rather than Spanish. This pressure has also given me that extra push to continue to learn to read and write properly.

            Last but not least, there have been times where I felt as if I had been discriminated against due to my ethnicity. For example, there have been instances where I would be having a conversation with someone and at the end they would say something along the lines of “oh, I didn’t think you would know what that meant” or also “wow for being Mexican you don’t have an accent”. Some may think that was a compliment, but I took it more of an insult. Just because I’m Mexican it doesn’t mean that I can’t comprehend what others say. Personal experiences like this have given me the will and desire to keep on learning and better myself in writing and being able to comprehend some reading easier. I found this to be an opportunity where I could better myself in English and Spanish literacy and be capable of showing that I can master two languages and not just one.

            Since my academic journey will continue for who knows how many more years, reading and writing will always play a vital role in my life. As I keep on expanding my knowledge on reading and writing, I will use it daily in and out of school and I will also help my family better their literacy problems as well. Once I graduate, literacy is going to be a must since I am going to be required to read and analyze paperwork, write reports on it, and even discuss, whatever the topic may be, with my colleagues.                  

All in all, at this point in my life I have mixed emotions and views about reading and writing. I don’t like it for simple reasons; such as it’s too time consuming and I never gained interest in it. But, I do find it to be important because it is something that will always help me learn and better myself academically.

Virtual Peer Review Script

1.       What I like most about your paper is your personal experience on how social media and interaction over the internet have affected your literacy. Reading your experience made me reflect and realize that the use of internet has impacted the way I write as well.
   2.      Based off of the thesis I am able to tell that the paper is going to be about your personal experiences and how they have influenced your literacy.  After having read your paper your thesis is very clear and it creates a layout for the paragraphs that you used in your paper. You fulfill all of the requirements, except for two which I will explain next.
   3.      Some things to add to your paper to fulfill the requirements would be to add an introductory paragraph that tells us a little about yourself and a paragraph at the end that will tell us how you plan to use literacy after school.
   4.      Each of your paragraphs discusses only one idea, and everything in the paragraph is related to that specific idea.
   5.      Overall I like the personal experiences that you chose to put in your thesis. Your paper is structured well based off of your thesis and the paragraphs are clear. As I had mentioned above, just include an introductory paragraph and a paragraph at the end. Besides that it would be good to add where you stand right now on literacy; for example whether you enjoy reading and writing.

Personal Literacy Narrative

Jose Ramirez

16 February 2014

English 1A

Literacy Narrative

            My name is Jose Julio Ramirez and I was born in Mexico, but moved to the states as an infant and have been raised here in Sacramento. Throughout the majority of my life, my family and I have lived in some pretty rough neighborhoods here in Sacramento. Since the neighborhoods that I have lived in were so infested by crime and violence, my parents found school to be my brother and I's safe haven. With that being said, my parents made school our number one priority and made sure we gave 100% effort academically. From that point on my parents and I placed high standards on my education and made it a goal to go to college. That is how I ended up here; now pursuing my dream of graduating college.

            Throughout my short lived life, reading, writing, and I have had a love-hate relationship. From the time I was in the fourth grade to present day, teachers, different academic standards, and being a minority have impacted my interest in reading and writing. What I mean by “being a minority” is that social and cultural issues have shaped my understanding and view on reading and writing. With that being said, I’m going to take you back all the way to when I was a kid and was barley learning how to speak English.

            Being Mexican and having almost every single family member be Mexican was the main reason that the first language I learned how to speak was Spanish. Spanish was my primary language that I used to communicate with my family. As I grew up my brother, uncle, and cousin were the main people that helped me learn how to speak English. As time went on and once I started going to school, I learned how to read, write, and speak English properly. I never found writing or reading in Spanish useful so I never bothered to learn how to do either. English, to me, seemed a lot easier when it came to writing and reading, so I took more interest in that than in Spanish. To this day I mainly use Spanish when talking with my parents or when I talk with other family members, but there are times when I do regret not taking the time to properly learn how to read and write in Spanish. Before I started kindergarten I was able to speak both languages.

            Once I reached the fourth grade I read a book that would change my opinion about reading and books for a while. The book was called Danger in the Desert by Terri Fields. This book fascinated me and really became the gateway for my interest in books. After reading this book I no longer felt that reading books was only used to learn. I looked beyond that and realized that some books were created for pure entertainment. From then to about the eighth grade reading was mostly a requirement but I actually enjoyed it. As for writing, I didn’t really have interest for it at the time.

            Once I became a freshman in high school my feelings and interest for reading and writing changed once again. At this point outside reading was no longer a requirement but an option or so called hobby. The only required reading was assigned books or text books. Being primarily focused on reading those books I didn’t pick up reading out of school. My joy for reading slowly started to fade until my junior year of high school, when our assigned reading was to read The Great Gatsby. I found the book to be really interesting and even thought about starting to read out of class more often. I tried reading as a hobby but it didn’t really stick with me. As for writing, I gained a bit more interest in it, but still despised it. Since most of my writing at the time was research papers or reflections of the assigned reading I found it to be just as boring. The one thing that made me gain more interest in writing was that I was good at it, often getting A’s and B’s on major writing assignments. This portion of my life really influenced how I felt about reading and writing. I think that if teachers would have chosen more interesting books to read I would have actually enjoyed reading and the writing assignments that came after.

            As I have mentioned, I don’t really like reading and writing for the reasons stated above. Although I may not like them I do find them to be very important in our everyday lives. My parents have always told me to never forget how to speak Spanish or to never forget my roots. But, they also could not stress enough on how important English is for a minority like myself. They have always wanted me to be successful and in a way they wanted me to prove to the world that minorities are just as capable of going to college or finding a good job. With that in mind I always found reading and writing to be important and essential even if I did not enjoy them. Besides my parents I felt pressured by society to be more dominant in the English language rather than Spanish. This pressure has also given me that extra push to continue to learn to read and write properly.

            Last but not least, there have been times where I felt as if I had been discriminated against due to my ethnicity. For example, there have been instances where I would be having a conversation with someone and at the end they would say something along the lines of “oh I didn’t think you would know what that meant” or also “wow for being Mexican you don’t have an accent”. Some may think that was a compliment, but I took it more of an insult. Just because I’m Mexican doesn’t mean that I can’t comprehend what others say. Personal experiences like this have given me the will and desire to keep on learning and better myself in writing and being able to comprehend some reading easier.

            Since my academic journey will continue for who knows how many more years, reading and writing will always play a vital role in my life. As I keep on expanding my knowledge on reading and writing, I will use it daily in and out of school and I will also help my family better their literacy problems as well. Once I graduate, literacy is going to be a must since I am going to be required to read and analyze paperwork, write reports on it, and even discuss, whatever the topic may be, with my colleagues.                  

All in all, at this point in my life I have mixed emotions and views about reading and writing. I don’t like it for simple reasons; such as it’s too time consuming and I never gained interest in it. But, I do find it to be important because it is something that will always help me learn and better myself academically.

Straub Response SWA

   After reading Straub's article on how to read and respond to other peoples writing, I have a more clear understanding of what should be included. He made it clear that you should respond to a peers paper almost if they were friend. But, he mentioned that just becaushe you think of that person as a friend, do not let them slide on errors. Another thing that I found useful was take into consideration what level of draft they were in and how much one should respond to a paper. My favorite was to keep in mind that we are the reader and they are the writer. I found that one to be the most interesting because there are times when a peer reviewing may want to add or correct more than in necessary; almost making it their paper. Overall I found this article interesting because it really helped me understand what should be included in a peer review.