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Birth
I was born in Shkodra, Albania in a homely family where everyone in the community knew each other. Previous communist ideals while accomodating a tightly knit community had created a society where no one person was truly rich nor poor. -
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Literacy Autobiography Timeline
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Childhood
I had been raised by my parents and on the occasions were my parents were too busy to take care of me cared for by my grandparents, I grew close mainly to my relatives due to strong family ties inherent in Albanian culture. I would later learn that not all cultures were as open and welcoming as Albanian culture was. The hot climate would help develop a need to go outside in order to play. -
First Day
This was my first day at school/kindergarden as far as I could remember and I was reluctant to go at first but had slowly adapted to the warm environment within. Learning the Albanian alphabet and it having 36 letters would later allow me to greatly express myself since there were several different ways to say the same sentence the Albanian language being highly flexible. -
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Grade 1 to 3 in Albania
For the first time in forever i had learned to count, read and write and learned the alphabet (the albanian alphabet having 36 letters). I developed strong friendships where we often talked and played all day due to a lack of dependence on technology. -
Beggining to Learn
This summer is when my mother had taken greater care towards teaching me how to read, and despite the intial disinclination towards the task that I had due to the multiple interpretations a sentence in Albania had I would eventually come to love interpreting the written form. -
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Elementary and Middle School in Canada
I slowly became accustomed to the english language through the use of media forms like television and also the influence of the written word through novels. It had been hard to adjust at first since the english language limits expression compared to Albania but I had grown to love different mediums like reading due to the new culture. -
Beggining of school in Canada
When I started Grade 3 I had been even more reluctant due to the new environment, I was never strongly open to change. The few words I knew were hi and bye so I couldn't effectively express myself in conversations and on top of that Canadians seemed to have strange customs. They would ask how you were and not really expect an answer. They were more quite and reserved, definitely a strange culture in the beginning that I'm still learning about. -
Unconventional Lessons
By the time the cold started to come I had discovered a fixation that kept me inside and warm and taught me to adapt to the culture around me, watching television. While some would argue it unconventional to learn through such a device it was one of the few first portals that acted as a gateway into learning the language of the country i was in. -
Spelling Bee
I had won the opportunity to participate in the spelling bee at my school due to being eager to learn the language of the culture i was in. I had tryed my best to be able to spell words due to my growing need to learn to adapt to the english language because I wanted to further immerse myself in the media forms I felt comftorble with, books and television. -
Love for Reading
Mrs. Brown (my grade 8 english teacher), had tried to nurture my love for literacy by appealing to my need to interpret the written word through novels, She had been the teacher who had introduced to the Harry Potter novels and had indirectly further fueled my affection for novels. -
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High School
I had further started to learn what kind of person I had wanted to become in life through my love of business. I had also slowly learned that I simply wasn't accomodated to the language and would have to try harder in order to understand how to write more fluently. -
Easier Transition
I had an easier time trying to adjust to the language when writing it around grade 10 due to the way that technology had simplified the process. Back in Albania although we had computers we didn't like to rely on them too much so early work was mainly written through handwiritng. As opposed to Canada where Microsoft Word would give you helpful synonoms on words to help expand both your vocabulary and help you more easily structure sentences as a result. -
Understanding what I've Learned
Before the Winter Break started I had learned a lot from one particular teacher. From him I've learned that you should love what you do if your doing it and that all things need practise. He was an english teahcer and even at this portion in my life my essays weren't the best but he made it fun to learn and I'd discovered that if you love what your doing you never truly stop learning it. I had promised myself that although I was inept in English that I would slowly learn to write better.