Zuhair 1

Abdullah Zuhair
Instructor Rebecca Agosta
UWRT 1101-029
1 October 2015
Stages of literacy experience
I believe that in the past, I have learned a lot with my experience of literacy. The
knowledge I received has enhanced my knowledge about culture, society, language and
writing skills. No doubt that my UWRT 1101course was one of my challenging courses
since I have been studying abroad in American college because English is not my first
language and also this is my first time taking an English class. It was pretty much difficult
for me because I had to study by myself such as I read the instruction carefully, tried to
understand in all details, thought of idea or topic that I wanted to write about, organized
my writing to make it professionally and tried harder to finish the works on time.
To be honest I take more time than native speakers to write. I still remember the time
when I had to prefer for my IELTS test in order to apply for the university in United States.
The major issue which I faced was because of my lack of understanding for English and I
had a lot of issues. No doubt, learning English as a second language was a challenge for
me.
I believe that my life story is really happening because I have observed a constant
change in myself since the time I was enrolled as a freshman till the time I was graduated.

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However, when I realized that English is this much important in my life and even in my
personal learning then I decided to learn English. Since I was preparing English in Saudi
Arabia in order to be a little prepared I followed what my English instructors write and I
was trying to learn a little English, because I realized how important it is to communicate
with people on the other side of the world. I wished to travel to a foreign country to learn
English. I decided to get high GPA to get a scholarship. I never got inclined towards
acquiring and learning the knowledge of English language. However, my interest and
contributions changed with the passage of time as when I was in my high school, I met my
teacher Ahmad who taught me a number of courses in human development and told me
that it is pretty possible for me to acquire learn English. My teacher Ahmad is from Sudan
affected me sharply because he knows how to deal with students whose English is not first
language.
Since I have arrived to the U.S, I studied at ELTI. Then, Looking back at my
written makes me think that I am a part of evolution. It has been a blessing that I have
evolved positively although I changed the style of writing but the heat, the rush, and the
passion in my writing is the same. The message in my previous writings were a bit violent
and bold but now with time they are more serene, peaceful, and finding happiness within
yourself. This gives me a confidence that I have started giving my positive energy to my
readers. When I was studying at ELTI, We mostly got assignments to test our analytical
skills. Throughout the course of time we did analysis of films taking into consideration one
or two points. If I go through these analyses I feel now that I could have done a little more

Zuhair 3
research to have a strong a grip over the material I was analyzing. I had that rush in me that
was also seen in my writing, which made me lose the minor details of the material.
As a result, from learning how to write properly at ELTI. Now I understand that
while you are critically analyzing something, it is as if you are scanning through infrared
radiations and no detail, action, or movement can go unseen and unnoticed. But I was
missing out some small but important things. The potential strategies that I used in my
style of writing are very simple yet very important and crucial to my work. When I get an
incoming of ideas and words I quickly write them. It does not matter if I change it or erase
it all but I do not want to lose my ideas. I try to connect to the people so that the reader
does not feel like an idiot. I aim to err on the side of expansiveness while I write so that the
reader does not feel out of the sphere. I try to put humor in my work which is a part of my
personality too.
My best writing however include the one in which I wrote the exploratory essay
which was about the gender diversity in the social life journal for the class. I was pretty
confident and proud about the skills and learning I learned throughout this course because
of which I was also able to express my thoughts in a better way in the paper. I have learned
about writing that one cannot just write any professional piece of writing in one go or by
doing it at one time but instead it is a long process which needs a lot of practice and hard
work along with time which should be given to the writing practice in order to have more
and more improvement in the writing skills. This is what I have done and was however

Zuhair 4
being able to achieve the best out of it. I think learning something is tough until you have
the dedicated and time to actually make it happen.
As I benefit from UWRT 1101. I was able to learn a lot about the analysis of
literacies because in our course we learned a lot about the definitions of literacy and how
we can deal with aspects we are unfamiliar with. The literacy narratives and other readings
from the course also helped me a lot to get an insight of literacies from a closer and critical
perspective. I also got to learn about the various different cultures when I got to read the
literacies in different languages other hand English. I also was able to find out the
differences which are present in my culture and in other cultures. This has also shaped my
reading and writing skills. I also consider my mother and my teacher Jessica Himc to be a
source of inspiration and support for me because it is only because of their help and
motivation that I got to learn with deep understanding.
In conclusion regarding my experience for student development and the college
experience, I would say that I gained a lot of experience in my learning and could regard
this as a positive journey where I welcomed a number of challenges and gained a lot of
experiences. This was also an important part of my life because I got to learn a lot about
the issues which a person could face in the process of learning and how these obstacles
could be handled because I had to keep a balance between my own needs and my family
needs. This was the major challenge for me because I want to prove my family that I am
capable of doing something worthy of respect and I was confident about my skills. This is
the major reason why I think I gained the level of success to some extent in my life.

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But the best way to embrace change is to always be firm about your personal
mission and values. Our values and mission give us a solid rock to keep our feet on when
everything around is changing and transforming.