Preface: iRead, iWrite

The purpose of this memoir is quite simple: to discuss the various ways in which technology has influenced my development as a writer, reader, and critical thinker. In accomplishing these goals, I have divided my literacy evolution into eight stages based on the Stages of Literacy as identified by researchers. These stages may be reached at different ages by different individuals and depend largely on a person’s cognitive abilities and his or her immersion in a language environment. The eight stages, each named according to a child’s acquisition of language, are:

Preliterate Stage
Emergent Literacy
Initial Reading and Writing
Transitional Stage
Basic Literacy
Refinement Stage
Advanced Literacy
Expert Literacy and Beyond

In this memoir, each stage will serve as a “chapter,” and in each chapter, I will briefly discuss generally how children develop as readers and writers in each stage and specifically how I developed in each stage.


This is me, trying to read Cinderella.

Preliterate Stage

During the preliterate stage most children are relatively passive in their acquisition of language. At the mercy of their parents, children soak up everything around them; their minds are sponges. They touch everything given to them, discovering different textures; they eat everything placed in their mouths, learning taste; they gaze at everything, taking in distance and color and shapes; they smell everything, discovering various aromas; and finally, they listen to everything, discovering language. Their essential mode of becoming literate is mimicry (Say Momma!). Thus, the more they are exposed to language, the more language they acquire and the more quickly they excel.

It may never be completely known how much infants learn and retain; each one is different and lives in a different environment. Scientists cannot simply ask them about what they are learning and expect a legitimate response; they may receive a giggle, a few burps, or even some malodorous flatulence as answers from their subjects. As a result, they can only observe what infants do and how they grow, thus laying the foundation for the stages of growth in literacy, which I use in this memoir.

In discussing my preliterate stage, I am certainly not the best source because I have no recollection of this stage in my life. So, I query my parents about my infancy.

My dad shrugs his shoulders and says, “I don’t know, sweetheart. You were always smart for your age. I think your first word was Momma, or maybe Daddy; I can’t remember.” Obviously, my first word was nothing too exciting, especially since my two older siblings probably said it too.

My mother, beaming with pride and eyes glistening with joyful tears, recalls a few of my more resplendent moments: “You were such a beautiful baby, all the nurses said so. You never learned to crawl either; you always sat up and pulled yourself around on the floor with one leg—it was the funniest thing to watch. I wish we had a video recording of it. And then there was the time you ate…” I’ll stop her right there.

All in all, I was a “normal” baby. I do know that I had various hand-me-down toys that were designed to speed a child’s mental growth, and there are a few pictures to prove it.

My cousin, Jason, and I with toys (above)

Me with my Mickey Mouse Telephone (below)

I also had a glow-worm. Apparently, this glow-worm and I were inseparable. The technology behind the toy is, by today’s standards, unremarkable, but to an infant, it was magic—whenever I squeezed the glow-worm’s abdomen, its face would glow. Allow me to demonstrate:

My mom, me, and my glow-worm

Amazing! However, even in such a simple plaything, I was able to improve as a thinker because I began to associate a stimulus with something else. With the glow-worm, I would squeeze it, expecting it to glow. Through what I will call “association,” I began to navigate through my environment and actually to do things such as walking without bumping into hard things and speaking. For example, when I finally did say “Momma,” my mother would gasp excitedly and encourage me to repeat it. As I matured, my ability to speak matured. I began to speak in coherent sentences and to have conversations with other people, and so I transitioned to the next stage of literacy, Emergent Literacy.

Emergent Literacy

During the emergent literacy stage, children are able to speak and begin to learn how to read and write by associating letter shapes with some sounds. When given a writing utensil such as a crayon or marker and paper, children will scribble and call it “writing.” Typically, they make these initial connections with their names or prominent symbols in their everyday lives. Often, this stage is reached during the pre-Kindergarten and Kindergarten years.

During my Kindergarten year, I used only the most advanced technology—paper, crayons, and the occasional marker—and learned the basics about reading and writing. As a class, we copied letters in both print and cursive and repeated the sounds associated with them.

First, we learned how to write our names, and upon mastering that task, our teacher, Mrs. Young, organized a parade in which we were to dress up as the letter of our first name and decorate the costumes with a something that began with that letter. Obviously, I was “R” and had chosen rubber bands to represent me. Here I am in all my glory:


Outside of school, however, my parents exposed me to more advanced types of technology. My dad worked for the Department of Defense, and on occasion, he was allowed to bring his computer home with him. At the time, his IBM 5120 computer system was the cutting edge of technology.


Sometimes, he would let us play computer games on it. Dig Dug was our favorite game, and in playing it, my siblings and I learned rudimentary keyboard navigation.



The game was very simple. In order to progress through the various levels, the character had to dig underground and eliminate the creatures lurking there. Although very little reading or writing was involved in the game, critical thinking was required. I did not realize it at the time, but this simple computer game caused me to think in non-linear ways and to plan how best to destroy the creatures without being killed by them and without the earth collapsing on “me,” the character inside the game. Thinking in such a way helped me progress to the Initial Reading and Writing Stage.

Initial Reading and Writing Stage

Children advance to this stage when they are able to reliably connect sounds to their corresponding letters, usually during the first grade. Reading and writing are still confined to simple, common words, but children begin to invent spelling for unfamiliar words and often resort to phonetic guessing.

In and out of school, I enjoyed reading and writing.I drew pictures of my family and labeled them appropriately; I loved to work the connect-the-dots, crossword puzzles, and word searches in the coloring books that my mother bought me.

However, as technology is concerned, I was glued to the television. I watched every Disney and Warner Brothers cartoon. The Disney cartoons really spurred my memorization skills. After watching The Little Mermaid for the consecutive third time, I had memorized the words to “Under the Sea” and could sing it only slightly off pitch.

One cartoon in particular really helped me learn to read: the Sing A-Long. These cartoons were quite ingenious. Along with creative cartoon drawings and narration, songs would play, and the words of the song would appear at the bottom of the screen. To help the viewer follow along, a ball or another symbol would bounce over the words synchronously with the music. Here is an example:



Cartoons like this one were truly amazing; they entertained me as much as they educated me, allowing me to progress into the Transitional Stage.

Transitional Stage

The transitional stage is a pivotal time for children who are learning to read and write and usually lasts from second to fourth grade. During this stage, children begin to depart from amateurish techniques such a word-calling or invented spelling in their reading and writing. Though their sentence structure and vocabulary remain simple, some children begin to revise by adding details and edit with basic punctuation. Their writing is longer and more developed and, at times, discusses topics that have moved outward from personal experiences.

My transitional stage was certainly crucial, for, during this stage, I fell in love with LeVar Burton, host of the television show Reading Rainbow. As a child, I loved to watch Reading Rainbow; it was my show. Everyday after school, I would grab my snack and park myself in front of the television, waiting to hear that theme song. Of course I sang along: “Take a look. It’s in a book. A Reading Rainbow! I! I can go anywhere!” Here’s a better version:



This show really propelled me to go beyond the egocentric. In each show, a narrator would read a selected text with a particular theme, and LeVar would travel to different places and interview different people about their careers while focusing on the theme presented in the book. I had my favorite books from various episodes: Bringing the Rain to the Kapiti Plain, Caps for Sale, A Three Hat Day, Stellaluna, and many more.

In addition to Reading Rainbow, I watched other shows that encouraged children to read, like Wishbone and The Magic School Bus, based on the books of the same name. Wishbone was very similar to Reading Rainbow. The main segment included a plot that was based on some classic piece of literature such as Romeo and Juliet, Frankenstein, or even Beowulf.

I originally read The Magic School Bus series, which helped teach scientific ideas to children while entertaining them, and I most readily began watching the television series.

Most of the television series listed here are commonly labeled as edutainment, or educational entertainment for youths. These shows helped spark my imagination and truly encouraged me to read. By the time I reached the Basic Literacy stage (fourth to sixth grade), I was reading series by Philip Pullman, Lloyd Alexander, Madeleine L’Engle, and C.S. Lewis.

Basic Literacy

In the basic literacy stage, children are able to read grade-level material and to look for meaning and ideas. As they expand the types of materials being read, they encounter both informational and narrative texts, and their writing reflects these modes. They begin to construct compound and complex sentences, to use revising strategies, and to reference sources in their writing.

During my basic literacy stage, I continued to read but mainly fantasy and mystery novels. Once I attempted to read Moby Dick, but I quickly lost interest. I also began playing board games such as chess, Monopoly, and Scrabble.

I also began to rely more and more on the computer to write. During school, I used the computer mainly to find books in the library. However, each week, our schedule had one hour dedicated to working in the computer lab. In the computer lab, we worked word searches, crunched numbers in Number Munchers, and played Oregon Trail.



At home, I used the computer to type book reports and projects for school and also my own short stories. Having voracious appetite for reading, I could not help but write my own stories. Most of my stories involved a character who looked uncannily like me and a character who looked uncannily like my cousin Jason. However, I never directly wrote about myself or my cousin. Instead, I always set the story during times distance from the present and, in doing so, burgeoned into the Refinement Stage of literacy.

Refinement Stage

In the refinement stage, young adults begin to take interest in topics far removed from themselves. They enjoy reading fantasy and science fiction, writing poetry or short stories, and studying specific subjects. Their sentence constructions are more complex, and as writers, youths develop their own style. After proper instruction, they can revise their writing by adding, deleting, and rearranging sentences and paragraphs. Most youths reach this stage by sixth grade and exit it by ninth grade.

During my refinement stage, schools began to utilize computers more for science and math classes, and as a result, I rarely used a computer for reading and writing. My interests during this stage lay in social studies, music, and literature. I even joined the Accelerated Reader Program. In this program, certain books were assigned a point value. After reading a qualifying book, a student would take a computerized test to evaluate how well he or she understood the reading and was awarded all or a portion of the book’s assigned point value. By the end of the school year, the students in the program had accumulated points, and those students with the highest points were given an award.

Unfortunately, my freshman year of high school was completely disrupted. Broken between three high schools, this final year of the refinement stage left me without a strong foundation to continue into the Advanced Literacy stage.

Advanced Literacy

In the advanced literacy stage, students begin to read “adult” texts such as Shakespeare and Dickens. These texts are far-removed from the students’ personal experiences and have complex vocabularies and sentence constructions. As their reading becomes more diverse, students begin to write about broader, more abstract topics. During these years, students should be able to read and comprehend advanced texts as well as research, analyze, and write about them. Typically, this stage is associated with grades tenth through twelfth.

Most of my classes taken during the advanced literacy stage never challenged me to think on any new or advanced grounds. My English classes failed to discuss Shakespeare beyond a surface level and never discussed Dickens, or writers like him, at all. Disappointed with the literature instruction, I turned to new subjects: math and science.

In these subjects, technology was essential. We used graphing calculators to graph linear and non-linear equations; we used computers to create, compare, and store charts and graphs for physics and chemistry. In this way, my critical thinking skills improved, but my reading and writing levels remained at a refinement stage level.

In a required computer class, we learned how to use Microsoft Office and especially how each Microsoft Office program could be used in conjunction with another. For example, an address database can be created in Microsoft Access and used with the mail merge function in Microsoft Word. I actually found this class was quite interesting, and it helped me use and understand Microsoft Office. However, when I graduated high school, I still had no idea how to write a research paper, and transiting into the final stage, Expert Literacy and Beyond, was no easy task.

Expert Literacy and Beyond

By this stage, writers have reached college and should easily handle abstract reading, writing, and thinking. Their writing skills are highly developed, and they should be able to write a variety of forms, from reviews and analyses to critiques and reports. Having established writing styles and techniques, these writers are expert editors and prepared for graduate school or professional vocations. However, their literacy levels continue to advance as long as they continue to learn and to write.

As already shown, my introduction to the expert literacy level was premature. No where near this level, I wandered aimlessly through core classes for years until, exhausted and frustrated, I nearly withdrew from college. However, as fate would have it, I found my way back to my first passion, reading and writing, when I took an American Literature class in the spring 2006 semester.

Since then, I have been immersed in the world and language of technology-from cell phones and iPods to Wiis and various computer systems. In some way or another, I have used these devices, especially a computer with internet access, to progress forward in my writing and reading abilities. As a student, I draft, revise, and edit all of my compositions, including this memoir, on a computer. Instead of going through the writing process step by step, I use technology to help me condense the process to suit my needs as a writer. I realize that I actually revise and edit my drafts while I type them in Microsoft Word. Not only does this save time, it also allows me to probe deeper into my subject matter and causes me to consider elements beyond what is typed on the page, such as my audience, purpose, and the flexibility of text.

Now all that I need to do is find a way to use technology to prevent my sister from stealing my toothpaste.

"Once you learn to read, you will be forever free." Frederick Douglass