Homework #13

Summary
In Cecchini and Perez's article, Motivation in Literacy and Development, they attempt to show students the numerous motivations there are to find that drive to write and read successfully. They back up their points by interviewing eight first-year honor students at the University of Central Florida, and discover the methods used by each students to develop academic success in literacy, as well as other subjects. All eight students had interesting backgrounds that drove them to want to be literate in reading and writing, whether it was their parents encouragement, siblings teasing them about not being able to read, or the development of computer programs that provided goals and enjoyment in reading/writing.

Do the authors put their own histories into the paper?
There were no personal stories or motivations listed in this paper about the authors' history in reading/writing. They solely relied on other students' stories to help construct their paper. It probably would have helped their paper if they would have included some personal stories of when they were first learning to read and finding that motivation.

Do you refer to yourself in 1st or 3rd Person?
I normally refer to myself in 1st person when writing a paper such as this one. Whenever I include myself in one of my papers, I always use first person; however, I do remember writing a narrative story once in middle school when I used one of my own personal stories and gave myself another character name.

Reflection
I enjoyed this paper because I think it will help me out some with my next paper that is closely related to this topic. My main motivation to read in elementary school was a program that our school started, called Accelerated Reader. With this program, I could read for competitive purposes because I wanted to get more AR points than my friends; plus at the end of the year we could use our points to buy things like CD players and basketballs.