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Andrew Negri
Professor Rebecca Morean
English 100: Section 15
September 18, 2014
An Experience With Words
Letter and word combinations spun my world around like a tornado overnight.
As a very young child, before I entered elementary school, it never dawned on me
that I was actually using letter and word combinations in my everyday life. The
concept of speaking and visualizing these combinations was near impossible to me.
Spoken words and written words existed separately.
I have vivid early childhood memories of my mother and father reading to
me, regularly. The books and stories that they read to me were about trucks and the
daring adventures of their operators.

At the time, my favorite set of books was a

popular childrens series call Tonka. I still remember that this series was sold at
one of my favorite places: a wonderland, Toys RUs. At this point, I had a basic
understanding of what a words were, but their value never truly resonated with me It
was not until I began to learn about them and to pronounce them for myself that I
began to appreciate them.
It never occurred to me that the first few hours of my kindergarten class would
forever change my perception of language. I would begin to appreciate these tiny
little symbols, which could form words and then words assembled into ideas, which
could create the stories, and images I saw in my mind. Word pronunciation was one
of our very first lessons in kindergarten, and my classmates and I were each required

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to sound out a word from a passage our teacher had carefully written out on the
chalkboard. We each took turns, and I was second. The word I was required to
pronounce was w-h-a-t. Until that moment, I had never comprehended that letters
could be arranged next to each other. Despite this startling revelation, I tried to focus,
thinking back to the sounds each letter in the alphabet made. I sounded each one out
silently in my head, running through them over and over until the final product was to
my satisfaction. Slowly raising myself up like a drawbridge; I repeated the word
what to the class. It was immediately obvious, from the looks and grins received
from my classmates; I had mispronounced the word. I disappointedly slumped back
into my seat in defeat. The teacher asked me to try again. Knowing this was my
chance at redemption, I did my best to stress each sound more strongly. The second
attempt was no more successful than my first, and I was ordered to once again to sink
into my seat.
The boy who sat next me, on my right, was told to rise with the objective of
repeating the same word. The way the word rolled off of his tongue, with such ease,
astonished me. I then repeated it several times myself trying to make the connection
between what I saw and the sound of the word. In that moment, I realized those
words were actually what I had been using every day of my young life; for a moment
I was very satisfied at this revelation. As soon as I got home that afternoon I
immediately attempted to read the labels on all of the cereal boxes in the cupboard,
with my mother alongside to assist me with any difficulties and with pronunciation, of
course. For the first time, I felt as if I was solving an intricate one thousand-piece

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jigsaw puzzle. The implications of all the letters and words were finally beginning to
dawn on me. It felt enlightening.
Recently, as a college student, I read some literary narratives and was able to
develop a small connection with a particular author, Shannon Nichols. She described
how she had always enjoyed writing until it was criticized schoolteachers and
administrators. I remembered, up until the third grade my passion for reading and
writing words took a sharp downward spiral. In a particular passage, Shannon
Nichols, explained that her failure on a test was primarily due to the fact that she
wrote what she felt and not what was expected of her. Writing, for me, essentially
became a mechanical process, and as a result I only wrote what teachers expected;
and I made no attempt to veer off in another direction for the sole fear my grade
would plummet. Before this point, I would look forward to displaying and sharing
the sentences I had joyously produced on my own, without the aid of either my
parents or my teachers.
The concept of reading and writing goes well beyond the elementary school
classroom environment; it is a tool for self-expression, thinking and often it is
beautiful. In retrospect, had I pursued literature and writing in recent years with more
passion instead of just treating it as just another subject, I could have gotten
enjoyment while developing as a student. I am beginning to appreciate more fully
what I learned as a small child that letters are formed into words, and words can be
assembled into literature, leaving the possibility to communicate any concept or
emotion.