Ashton Crabtree Emilia Fuentes English 1101-9 18 September 2013 Literacy Memoir Have you ever been sitting

in your English class during a group discussion about a book you had to read or an essay you had to analyze and been completely confused and lost? That is how I felt during every discussion up until the day I found out how to annotate books, papers, essays, etc. Every time the teachers would talk about what we had to read for homework I seemed to never get the meanings that they did. I never picked up on the hidden meanings or parallels that were made. Because of my lack of understanding, I never participated in group discussions. This led to me never doing my best on tests. For the most part I understood the book, but not well enough to make an A on the test. Annotating came very easy for me. I am a very analytical person so as I read the books or essays I never left one important detail unmarked. I remember very clearly the first time I found this technique that could help me understand books and essays. My high school junior English teacher made the whole class go out and purchase our own copy of the book we were about to read. It was called Puddnhead Wilson by Mark Twain. In all my previous English classes we had never had to buy the book we were reading so this was a little odd to me. She told us that we would be annotating the book and that it would help us when it came time for the test. She also said we would have our books checked after each reading assignment to make sure we were writing and highlighting in the book. At first

Crabtree 2 I was scared that I would annotate wrong. I had never annotated anything and up until the day she explained what annotating was, I had no clue what is was or how you were supposed to do it. As we read the book I would circle words I did not know and I would underline parts that I felt were important. At the end of each chapter I would summarize what I read and again highlight the main points. Sometimes I even drew pictures to help me remember certain people and their characteristics. If I was never told to annotate the book I would not have done it, but being required too showed me that I do not have to go through English classes lost all the time. I can take that book or essay and break it down piece by piece and analyze it to the point that I could participate in class discussions and know what we were talking about. With me being such an analytical person I found that annotating was very easy. Now, every time I have a reading assignment I take notes so I can focus better and remember what I read. In the past whenever I did not understand what I was reading I felt that it was not important. That way of thinking does not lead to success. Being literate and now having this way of understanding the readings gave me an advantage against those who do not annotate. Sylvia Scribner talks about literacy as power in her essay titled Literacy in Three Metaphors. She implies that literacy is power when you know more than someone else. I agree with her. Anytime that you know more information about a certain topic, person or event you are already ahead of others. You get to use that information to your advantage. Not all English classes at my high school learned how to annotate books. Annotating gives you the ability to understand a text better than others who would just read straight through.