My Writing Experience

I had learned to read earlier than most people. At the age of two/three, my mom had ensured that I could understand the words on a page. I latched on to reading. During elementary school, instead of paying attention in class, I was reading. When I went home after school, I read. In all the tiny empty moments, I read. I was filling my mind with all the fictional characters and stories I could. But outside of my blissful world of reading, my homework remained undone. My teachers grew frustrated. My grades suffered. Halfway through elementary school, I moved schools. Instead of trying to make friends, I looked for new books. However, I think I realized at some point that I couldn’t keep doing what I was doing. When I advanced to middle school,

I have read fictional books, newspaper articles, textbooks, and academic novels/memoirs. The guidelines for each of these works are vastly different. Fictional books tell a story, transport you to another world. Articles inform you through multiple small stories, opinions, and facts. When I first started to write essays, I realized that I was unknowingly implementing some of these styles into my own writing. This has certainly made many of my writing pieces better. My vocabulary has also increased a great deal in the long run. Whenever I write, I sometimes find myself using words that I had learned just a few days ago. These words have come to litter my writing, and definitely make it look more pleasant. All those years of reading- whether fiction, news, or academics- paid off in the form of my writing. But it has not only helped with my writing, but with my reading comprehension as well. When I first started reading the New York Times, I realized I needed to read every sentence very carefully to understand the message the author was trying to convey. I could not skim over a few sentences here and there like I could in fictional novels. Whenever I read the Times, I have to decipher every sentence, make sure I know every word’s definition, and think analytically. This essentially is what reading comprehension is. These skills- my reading comprehension, my vocabulary, my writing- are immensely useful in my daily life now. All my years of reading have bettered my abilities in the language arts field. However, I still have many more things to learn and want to continue to read and write- hopefully in the Honors