Peter Castaneda English 115 9:30 Mon/Wed Prof.

Lorie Hamalian October 7, 2013 Reading Beowulf Helped Motivated me to Become a Better Reader/Writer: Reading different kinds of literature can serve as enlightenment to different ideas and emotions towards reading and writing. The most amusing thing that I remember about learning to read and write was identifying every letter of the alphabet by the animals on the alphabet cards pinned up on the wall in my childhood kindergarten class. Our teacher, Mr. Kay, would read the entire alphabet with us every day and doing so really helped me with my pronunciation and spelling. This helped make me the better writer that I am today even in the slightest scale. Over the course of my education, which all started in kindergarten, I gained superior reading skills such as reading fluency, reading comprehension, word recognition, and phonics skills which all lead me to become a more improved reader. After reading Beowulf in my twelfth grade English class my view on literacy changed overwhelmingly as my comprehension over different types of writing opened up. When I was in my English 12 class in high school, I thought it was going to be the hardest year ever once she handed out copies of Beowulf. After sitting down in front of a copy of Beowulf, which our teacher had placed on everyones table, I started reading through a random page of the book but I could not, for the love of god, understand what they were saying; I knew what most of the words meant but I just couldnt understand what was going on throughout the entire page. It was almost like a bulk of random ideas on the same topic was thrown blindly into the text. When I was trying to read through this book during the first week it was assigned, I

thought I was trying to read a completely different language. I would walk into class with completely different summaries to that of my class mates and feel like I had read a completely different chapter. Then when I would take part in Socratic seminars, which are kind of like AA meetings but to discuss topics or ideas on work, in this case, the readings from the book, people would look at me like I had no clue what I was saying so I stopped trying to join in on a lot of the future seminars because I thought I would be ridiculed in front of the entire class. Reading Beowulf didnt go so well and because of it I scored a C during first semester, often getting Your writing strayed from the topic at hand written in bright red ink on basically all my essays. I felt exactly like Shannon Nichols in her narrative, Proficiency, when she states After I failed the test the first time, I began to hate writing, and I started to doubt myself I felt like giving up on the topic of old English reading and just moving on with my school year. I was seriously upset over the fact that I received my first C in high school because of a book I couldnt understand that well. Once my report card came home, I tried to run for the mail first but it was too late, I had overslept that day and my mom woke me up with the most upset face she had given me in a long time. She consulted with me on why I got that C and ended up cheering me up with examples from which she decided not to give up and prospered in return. The one that got to me the most was the story of how she failed her citizenship test because she couldnt speak English and instead of calling it quits, decided to enroll into English classes on top of her Two jobs just so she could set an example for me; that she did. From that I went into winter break with a mindset of coming back completely refurbished and ready to get that A in the class for second semester. Upon arriving at class the first day out of winter break, a copy of Hamlet by Shakespeare was waiting for us, each student had their own copy on their seat. I skimmed through it and

thought This is worse than Beowulf while it was a bit easier to read through it just looked like so much to take in from the length of the text. The same day, we were assigned to analyze Hamlets To be or not to be speech and the only thing I remember was the amount of steam that exited my head that day; It was intense. While we were packing to leave onto our next period our teacher, Mrs. Cutler, offered to stay and read the book after school as a group with whoever wanted to stay. She offered to do this every day that we had an assigned reading. I took the opportunity and stayed after school with her for almost half of second semester, it was one of the best decisions Ive made thus far. Instead of staying home, playing video games all day I actually decided to do something productive and it paid out. I learned to read a lot faster and the information that I attained each and every day actually stuck because it was making sense to me for once. After staying only a week, Mrs. Cutler had helped me out so much. At first I told her that the real problem was that I had trouble comprehending the readings due to their complex style of writing and old English vocabulary. She saw that I truly need her help and slowly taught me that most of the words used in the old English style of writing still use very similar roots to that of modern English. Once I started understanding the writing a bit more fluently, I started noticing that I was slowly getting through the reading at an increasingly faster pace. Through about half of the book my reading fluency had skyrocketed compared to that of what I was capable of during first semester. I was reading through the book and actually accurately comprehending what I had read for the first time. After reading the book Hamlet, we were asked to write an essay depicting how Hamlet had changed as a person throughout the book. Having actually understood the book and having found lots of examples, I wrote a 6 page essay on how Hamlet progressively changed throughout

the play/book with incredible ease. By this point all I had to do was go back to the intensive notes that I took within the book and pull information that I felt was crucial. I still remember the joy I felt, my essay was placed on the wall of the class with a total score of 100/100 with the word Excellent! slanted across the top in bright green ink. Because I took the time to stay after school and get better at reading and writing, I ended up noticing my own progress by receiving improved grades on my writings compared to my poor work prior to the after school sessions. Thanks to the help of Mrs. Cutler and the example that was set by Beowulf which motivated me by setting a good example of what happens when I dont try hard enough to improve or understand things I dont; I increased my reading and writing fluency and comprehension. The sense of accomplishment I felt after reading Hamlet was intense. Mrs., cutler let me keep the book partly because I had written notes all over it but mainly because she was proud of the effort I put into improving due to that book. We still keep in touch and I let her use my story to give hope to future students that may feel the same way as me but that might not have the support that I had from my family.

Works Cited
Goggin, Richard Bullock and Maureen Daly, ed. The Norton Field Guide to Writing. 2nd. W.W. Norton & Company, 2010.