reading experience essay

The New York Times

The learning network | what’s your reading history reflecting on the self as reader.

What’s Your Reading History? Reflecting on the Self as Reader

Language Arts

Teaching ideas based on New York Times content.

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Overview | What does it mean to be literate? How do our reading experiences shape who we are? In this lesson, students reflect on a formative reading experience and use it as a springboard for tracing their reading lives by creating timelines to reflect past and present experiences. They culminate the personal reading history project through reading, writing and/or discussion.

Materials | Student journals, handouts

Warm-up | Tell students you are going to lead them through a guided meditation meant to help them recreate an important reading experience in their memory.

Begin by asking them to close their eyes and put their heads down on their desks. Turn the lights down or off. Read this script, giving them a few moments to reflect after each prompt:

Today, we’re going to take a trip back through your life as a reader. In your mind, put aside the reading you’re doing for school and go to a place where you have positive feelings about reading. … Maybe you are being read to or maybe you are reading yourself. … Try to settle on a single memory … and dwell in it. What book is being read? What does it look like? Feel like? Are the pages thick or thin? Are there pictures? What colors and images stand out? What does it smell like? Where did this book come from? How did you happen upon it? Did someone give it to you? Did you borrow it from the library? If you chose it, what attracted you to it? Now, look around. Where are you? Indoors? Outdoors? Cuddled up on a couch or lying in the grass? Are you comfortable? Are you warm or cold? How old are you? Are you alone or with someone else? How do you feel? Now listen. Who is reading? A parent? Grandparent? Sibling? Try to remember the voice. Is it quiet or loud? Soft? Animated? Or, are you reading to or by yourself? What sounds surround you? Are you aware of any as you read? Do you imagine any as you read? What characters do you meet as you become immersed in the world of the book? Are they like you or different? Where does the book take you? Is it a real place or an imaginary one? What do you remember about the world of the book? How do you feel reading this book? How do you feel when it ends? Slowly bring yourself back to the present day. What sticks with you still about this reading experience?

Next, turn on the lights and ask students to open their eyes. Then, ask them to open their journals and freewrite about the memory they just experienced, incorporating as much detail as they can recall. If you’d prefer, you can do this exercise with the lights on, having them freewrite as you guide them through the script. In either case, the point is to write to think — assure students their work here will not be collected or graded.

Invite students to share their experiences. Ask: What kind of reading experiences remain etched in your minds? Why are reading experiences powerful influences? What does it means to be “well read”? What reading experiences are considered seminal for educated people? Why? What does it mean to be literate? What is cultural literacy? Information literacy? What other kinds of literacies are there?

Related | In her essay “I Was a Teenage Illiterate,” the novelist Cathleen Schine discusses how she found herself “illiterate” at 26 and explores the reading experiences that shaped her:

At the age of 26, when I returned to New York after an inglorious stab at graduate work in medieval history on the frozen steppes of Chicago, I had a horrifying realization: I was illiterate. At least, I was as close to illiterate as a person with over 20 years of education could possibly be. In my stunted career as a scholar, I’d read promissory notes, papal bulls and guidelines for Inquisitorial interrogation. Dante, too. Boccaccio. . . . But after 1400? Nihil. I felt very, very stupid among my new sophisticated New York friends. I seemed very, very stupid, too. Actually, let’s face it, I was stupid, and it was deeply mortifying, as so many things were in those days. But I have since come to realize that my abject ignorance was really a gift: to be a literarily inclined illiterate at age 26 is one of the most glorious fates that can befall mortal girl.

Read the essay with your class, using the questions below.

Questions | For discussion and reading comprehension:

• What exactly does the writer mean when she says she is “illiterate”?
• Who was Dostoyevsky ? Why does Ms. Schine blame him for her state of affairs?
• On the other hand, why is she grateful to him?
• What other books have been influential in Ms. Schine’s history as a reader?
• What do you suppose Italo Calvino meant when he said that a work read at a young age and forgotten “leaves its seed in us”? What are some books that have left their seeds in you?

Related Resources

From the learning network.

• Books, Readers, and Teachers: A Wrap-Up
• Lesson: No More Moldy Oldies: Appreciating Classic Texts
• Lesson: Out Loud: Assessing the Experience of Reading and Being Read to Aloud

From NYTimes.com

• Times Topics: Books and Literature
• ArtsBeat Blog: Where Does a Love of Reading Come From?
• Essay: Volumes To Go Before You Die

Around the Web

• Voices of Readers
• National Public Radio: You Must Read This
• Video: What Does It Mean to Be Literate in the 21st Century?

Activity | Explain to students that they will create timelines chronicling their reading history. Lead them through the process of brainstorming and drafting using the handout My History as a Reader (PDF), and then using their drafts to create polished pieces that reflect who they are as readers.

In their final timelines, they should include all types of experiences with reading that have shaped who they are as readers today and illustrate the timeline using meaningful images, such as book cover art for favorite books, photos of characters or readers who have inspired them, elements of locations that they have visited or would like to visit, etc.

When students have finished their timelines, post them around the room and encourage wandering. Ask students to look for and note commonalities in their classmates’ work. You might even hang blank sheets of paper underneath each one so that students can post comments.

Reconvene as a class for discussion. Ask: What reading experiences have been most influential in your life? How were you encouraged and discouraged to become a reader? What did you learn about yourself by creating your timeline? What did you learn about classmates by looking at their timelines? What did your classmates’ timelines make you think about? Do you consider yourself “literate”? Why or why not? By what definition? Is it important to you to be “literate”? Why or why not?

Going further | Here are several ideas for taking this activity further:

• Students use the freewriting they did during the warm-up and their timelines as the basis for crafting short autobiographies of themselves as readers. They might use “I Was a Teenage Illiterate” as a model for their autobiographical essay, starting, as Ms. Schine did, with an assessment of themselves as readers today, then delving into their pasts as readers (using their timelines), discussing formative reading experiences, and finishing with a look forward to their possible futures as readers. Alternatively, they read Chapter 1 of Italo Calvino’s “If On a Winter’s Night A Traveler” and use it as a model for writing about their own reading histories, focused on one book that had a powerful impact on them.
• Students bring in an influential children’s book or excerpt from a novel to share aloud with classmates for a read-around, along with the relevant section of their autobiography.
• Lead a field trip to, or encourage students to visit, your school or local library or bookstore so that students can browse books that interest them. Then, have students create lists imagining their futures as readers. What books do they dream of reading? Why? Encourage them to think about what kinds of literacy they value and build their own personal reading list to reflect those values.
• Circulate a variety of book lists, such as the College Board’s 101 Great Books , the American Library Association Booklists , Listology’s 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die or one of the “Great Books” lists . As students browse the lists, discuss what kinds of works are included and what or whose values these lists reflect.
• Start an independent reading project in which students undertake one or more of the books they have dreamed of reading.

Standards | From McREL , for grades 6-12:

Language Arts 1. Uses the general skills and strategies of the writing process 5. Uses the general skills and strategies of the reading process 6. Demonstrates competence in the general skills and strategies for reading a variety of literary texts 7. Uses the general skills and strategies to understand a variety of informational texts 8. Uses listening and speaking strategies for different purposes

Life Skills: Working With Others 1. Contributes to the overall effort of a group 4. Displays effective interpersonal communication skills

Arts and Communication 3. Uses critical and creative thinking in various arts and communication settings 4. Understands ways in which the human experience is transmitted and reflected in the arts and communication 5. Knows a range of arts and communication works from various historical and cultural periods

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Pathways to Academe

Teresa Cremin

As an avid childhood reader perhaps it was inevitable that I enjoyed teaching children to read in primary schools and later came to research recreational reading and the practices that support it. Reading took me places as a child—I adventured in fictional worlds, fought dragons, schemed to overthrow the powerful, fell in and out of love and in effect lived vicariously through literature. Years later, still a reader, I find myself intrigued by the connections between my personal and academic identities and interests. How do we come to find the focus of our research journeys and to what extent do our life practices and academic interests feed off one another?

These are some of the questions I want to explore in this chapter as I reflect upon my life history as a reader, as a teacher of reading and as a researcher of children’s and teachers’ identities as readers. Whilst this is of necessity a personal journey, I trust there will be connections for you. Others’ life stories can enable us to make sense of our own experiences, prompting reflection and reminiscence. I hope my narrative will connect to you, enabling you too to revisit your early passions, be they reading, sport, or music for instance, and prompting you to consider how these early interests may have shaped your later life’s work in complex and intriguing ways.

Over the years I have studied and researched far more than reading: teachers’ identities as writers also fascinate me, and the opportunities offered to young children to write creatively. In addition, creative pedagogy, storytelling, drama and play are aspects of my impassioned research enquiries. However, I recognise that when I am reading, researching, talking or writing about reading for pleasure—that volitional act of engagement with texts which offers me such satisfaction—I feel most ‘at home’ as an educator, a researcher and a human. I may even be in my ‘element’ in the words of Robinson (2015) and ‘in flow’ as Csikszentmihalyi (2000) describes those spaces where we are deeply and affectively engaged, aligned with ourselves and able to be creative.

Growing up as a reader

During my formative years I came to love reading. My earliest readerly memories are of re-reading the relatively sparse collection of books we had at home, visiting the library in Banstead to feed my appetite and swapping magazines such as Jackie and Mandy with friends at school. My mother did not really approve of such reading material, which no doubt enhanced my interest and commitment to the genre. Under cover I swapped many of these ‘illicit’ texts with friends; I delighted in them. My dad allowed us to spend our pocket money on what we chose, so I often bought a magazine on Saturday mornings at Chipstead corner shop, then on our return I’d rush to my bedroom, shut the door and devour it in private—furtively stuffing it under the bed afterwards out of mum’s sight. In particular I enjoyed the black and white photo-stories which often ended, after several weeks of tension and discord, in that longed for teenage kiss.

Years later I happened upon reprinted copies of several such magazines (offered free with the Observer) and I felt a visceral sense of joy and re-connection. For four weeks they arrived as part of the Sunday supplement, I rushed to read them like a child and found many strongly ‘affective traces’ of my past (Waller, 2019). I read and re-read the photo stories, searched for the kiss in the final frames, and delighted in the pin ups of Slade (my heart-throb Noddy Holder), and a doe eyed David Essex (or perhaps that was me!) with long hair curling over their shoulders. The visuals transported me back in time. The colour adverts for Rimmel make-up targeted at teens, such as a duo of pink eyeshadows (for just 30 old pence!) that I’d once saved for and then found was out of stock at Boots took me right back to that moment of disappointment. The flowing floral midi dresses with frills reminded me of the tartan wool skirt my mum made for me, (which I had never liked) and discos in Kingswood community hall, with us girls dancing round a lone handbag. Encountering these magazines as an adult, my reading and my past came back with an adrenaline rush of pleasure, teenage angst and a tangible sense of particular places. Needless to say I have kept these jewels of yesteryear, they represent part of my identity as a reader, are much thumbed and well protected.

My childhood pleasure in reading was also sustained by our family holidays. Each year in western Scotland my dad would go fishing with my brother, while my mother and sister would go bird watching or set off on long walks to find wild flowers. Personally, I read. Alone in the bracken (with a meat pie or sausage roll and the promise not to move until they returned), I’d go on adventures far more exciting to me than my siblings’ literal realities. Characters from Eleanor Brent Dyer, Alkan Garner, Susan Cooper, Enid Blyton, the Readers’ Digest real-life stories and many more became my constant companions. Ulapool, the nearest town, was a full hour away on a single track road and there was no library, so whilst I took new books with me each vacation, I was soon obliged to re-read the books in the little croft in which we stayed. Maybe I drew comfort from the steadfastness of the texts left there, the predictability and consistency of the cast of characters to whom I returned year after year. I enjoyed the peace and privacy of revisiting my reading journey. On our days out too, if it rained, I was often left in the car or at a bothy at my own request, happy to read, eat, relax and imagine. Place was of vital importance in these early encounters, my reading was always situated—both at home (always in my bedroom) and on holiday (always alone and often outdoors).

Context counts in our early text encounters and shapes our experience of reading, as memoirs of childhood reading often show (e.g. Mangan, 2018). Which places were of salience to you as you look back on your early reading? Can you recall even now the smell, sound and sensations of your life at the time? The people around you? The emotions attached ? These are part of our reading histories, of who we were and potentially who we became as readers.

Being a reader at school

Intriguingly, my memory of being a reader at school is not particularly strong. Were we read to? I know not. Did we have reading time? I know not. I do recall that my friends and I swapped our magazines and books and chatted about them sometimes. In secondary school I particularly enjoyed books about love during the Irish troubles, for example, Joan Lingard’s Kevin and Sadie’s stories— Across the Barricades —a series of romantic and political fictions, set during the Irish troubles which were being played out at the time. These resonated with West Side Story and of course Romeo and Juliet . I read many tales of love and hope amidst contexts of war and strife, they filled my days with tension and hoped-for romantic resolutions, as well as political questions which my parents couldn’t fully answer. As Mackey highlights, ‘we read our own worlds into the words of our books, and these worlds will not be subtracted from the understanding we develop from the texts’ (2016, p. 263).

While close attention to the construction of literary texts and the need to memorise ‘right answers’ for exams sometimes reduced my pleasure, the rich language of Othello , Nostromo , Paradise Lost , Under Milkwood and many others remain evocative and enticing to me, even to this day. Music to be read and re-read. I fell in love with poetry at this age too, in part fed by the social and cultural practices in which our family engaged. The musicality and rhythms of church psalms and hymns, Guide songs and chants and 70’s lyrics filled my days. My mother directed a Scout and Guide Gang Show every other year and as young people we got to know these songs and tunes by heart, they added to our campfire repertoires and were cheerfully re-voiced on family holidays (by all but my long-suffering dad!). On church youth club trips—weeklong residentials to the Lake District or Snowdonia—in the presence of friends who didn’t attend the same school as me, I chose not to take books—it didn’t feel right. Instead I hid my passion for fiction and poetry, not wanting to be seen as overly learned. Retrospectively, I think I was probably trying on a ‘take it or leave it’ reader identity, to see what difference it might make.

With A levels dominating everything, and English, biology and history texts to study (‘wider reading’ wasn’t celebrated or valued in those days), my pleasure in fiction was diminished at the end of secondary schooling. The environment that had previously supported and challenged my growth as a reader was shrinking to a single focus: get the grades to get into university. No one from my family had ever attended university and I felt a desire and a pressure to break the mould, to be university material. It took time and single-minded determination; freetime fiction reading had to be placed to one side.

Did the same happen to you as you grew up as a reader? Did you experience a sense of distance from the pleasure of being a reader as your life changed and the system obliged you to prioritise academic work? Or did you remain engaged as a reader despite these pressures? Perhaps you didn’t experience reading as tempting and delightful in your early years? We are all unique readers on our own journeys with different stories to tell, but through reflecting on our life histories as readers we can learn a great deal, both about reading and ourselves.

Being a reader at university

At Bristol, I read psychology and papered my bedroom walls with the verses of Dylan Thomas, Roger McGough, Helen Steiner Rice, Sylvia Plath, Seamus Heaney, Adrian Mitchell and many other poets whose voices I wanted to capture and possess, but it seemed there was even less time there for fiction, for other worlds, others’ lives, loves and magic. Even on holidays I don’t recall choosing to read for relaxation. The habit had gone, dusted down perhaps as a passing childhood passion. Looking back, whilst I think I did see myself as a reader then, I framed myself as a serious undergraduate reader of psychology, social anthropology, child development and memory, not as a free reader venturing into imagined worlds. In our flat no-one bought or discussed fiction—we were variously studying politics, psychology, biochemistry and geology and focused on getting good grades (alongside the usual social life and long nights discussing the world). I cannot recall a single conversation about reading novels. Maybe we implicitly viewed such reading as childish, Richard and Judy book clubs had not been conceived and perhaps less profile was given to recreational reading.

Did your peer group also shape your reading practices, as they did mine, not only as a young child but later too? No doubt I shaped my flatmates’ reading lives as well, there was no network for us to tap into as fiction readers, nor did we create one. Although now, years later, the five of us do occasionally chat about novels, swap titles and give books for each other’s birthdays.

Learning about reading as a teacher

After university I did a PGCE in Cambridge to become a teacher. There I was reintroduced to pleasures of fiction, read children’s texts very widely, and learnt about their complexity. Children’s texts are not some watered-down version of adult literature, but like all literary texts, have the potential to create aesthetic experiences that enhance our understanding of the human condition. As Bruner (1990) has shown, we use narrative to make sense of experience and to represent and reflect on our broader social world. In my training, I encountered reader response theories which view reading as an active meaning-making process between reader(s) and text(s). As I studied reading for the first time, I began to realise that texts are not fixed, but develop their potentiality through the reader’s engagement with them (Rosenblatt,1978/,1994; Iser, 1978) .

In school as an ingenue teacher, I remember trying to help children engage with reading and find themselves in the mirrors of fiction (Bishop, 1990). I read aloud to my classes, shared my newly unquenchable thirst for fiction (and poetry) and tried to help create legacies of past satisfaction for the young. However, some simply didn’t want to know, they were already deeply disinterested due to past experiences—even as 7-8 year olds. They eschewed any sense of a reader identity, and labelled those who read as ‘boring’ and ‘geeks’. They had not yet found what reading was good for. Although I worked to get to know these readers, and used my repertoire of children’s texts to make recommendations, I feel sure I didn’t make positive reader identity positions available to all. Then, the concept of reader identities was unknown to me, I was unaware I was framing the readers in my class. I did however try to offer stories that opened doors and windows to others’ worlds, in order for children to develop empathy and awareness of the plight of others, perhaps as I had done through the Irish troubles Kevin and Sadie stories years before. I also shared my own passion for reading with children.

I recall finding Bridge to Terabithia , a children’s novel by Katherine Patterson, very moving, and was crying when Darren, a boy from my class, encountered me on the pavement outside school at lunchtime. The death in the text resonated with the loss of my closest girlfriend some months before; I was overwrought and propping myself up on a post, unable to move. “It’s alright miss’ Darren reassured me, “books get you like that sometimes don’t they?- like they’re real you know—but they’re not” . I can still see his face at that moment in my mind’s eye, decades later.

If reading is anything, it is surely thinking about meaning, and when we connect the texts we read to the stories of our lives (and vice versa) we bring our memories, experiences, prior knowledge and understanding to bear on whatever we are reading. As Rosenblatt observed:

The special meaning… the submerged associations that these words and images have for the individual reader will largely determine what the work communicates to him. The reader brings to the work personality traits, memories of past events, present needs and preoccupations, a particular mood of the moment and a particular physical condition… in a never to be duplicated combination (Rosenblatt,1978/1995, p. 30-31).

It is the transaction between readers and texts and these notions of the reader’s life, past and present and the ‘physical condition’ and ‘particular mood of the moment’ that in large part shape and influence our affective engagement in reading. I feel sure you can recall occasions when you experienced an almost visceral bodily response to a text, and /or a personal and emotional connection that enabled you to re-read your life through the narrative? The black and white marks on the page resonate with the meanings we bring and those we co-create with the author as we read, and that applies to this chapter you are reading, as well as works of fiction.

Researching reading for pleasure

I found the research around reading so intriguing that when I moved to the university sector, I began to explore the role of Reading Teachers, teachers who read and readers who teach (Commeyras et al., 2003). I wanted to understand if positioning oneself more personally as a reader, and teaching from a reader’s point of view, might make a difference to children’s desire, motivation, and behaviour as readers. My reading journey was beginning to shape the questions I wanted to answer as a new researcher and teacher educator.

So, working with UK Literacy Association colleagues we piloted a Teachers as Readers survey of teachers’ reading practices and their knowledge and use of children’s texts. 1200 teachers from 11 Local Authorities completed it and we were shocked by the results. The data revealed that whilst these teachers were readers in their adult lives, when it came to school they relied on a limited canon of books from their childhood and celebrity children’s authors. Dahl dependency was worryingly rife (Cremin et al., 2008a, b). Incredibly, 22% could not name a single poet and 24% could not name a single picture fiction creator. These findings, which received considerable media and policy interest, created cause for concern, how could teachers possibly foster reader development without such subject knowledge.

So in my next project Teachers as Readers Phase II we foregrounded teachers’ experience of texts and their pleasure in them, and prompted teachers not only to read more widely, but also to reflect upon their practices and preferences as readers. We also examined the potential dynamic between teachers and children as readers. Amongst myriad insights, the project revealed that volitional reading is strongly influenced by relationships: between teachers; teachers and children; children and families; and children, teachers, families and communities, and that a reading for pleasure agenda can be developed effectively through the creation of classroom reading communities of reciprocity and interaction (Cremin et al., 2014). Such communities, the research indicated, are most effectively led by Reading Teachers who recognise the significance of reader identity in reader development and frame their practice in responsive ways.

Was I researching my own practice as a teacher from years before, only this time through a more informed socio-cultural lens? Perhaps so, although I don’t think I fully appreciated that at the time. Through case studies, we found that those practitioners who developed most fully as Reading Teachers appeared to make the most impact upon the children’s attitudes and attainment.

Since then, I have worked on a number of reading research projects. I sought to understand the role librarians play in extracurricular reading groups, (Cremin and Swann, 2016, 2017) and the ways digital library systems position teachers as monitors and curators of children’s reading, not as co-readers or mentors (Kucirkova and Cremin, 2017). More recently, working alongside other OU colleagues, we examined the disengagement of young boy readers. Soberingly, this revealed that teachers’ perceptions of children’s gender, class and ethnicity shape their practice, significantly constraining the boys’ engagement as readers (Hempel Jorgensen, Cremin, Harris and Chamberlain, 2018).

In each of these studies, our research questions, though tailored to the project in question, linked in some way to the children and adults reader identities.More recently I’ve developed a practitioner community website to share some of this research, which has hundreds of examples of teachers’ evidence informed practice, developed as a consequence of their engagement with OU/ UKLA Teacher Reading Groups. These inspiring examples, in line with the research, demonstrate that when practitioners read more widely, get to know the children as readers, develop their reading for pleasure pedagogy, and a Reading Teacher stance, they are enabled to build strong communities of engaged readers. These communities have positive consequences for young readers. (See: https://researchrichpedagogies.org/research/reading-for-pleasure .)

Each study and the website have helped me understand more of the complex relationships, identity enactments and interplay between adult and child and child-child readers. In effect, my early pleasure in reading and renewed passion has been examined through this work. The lines between being a reader and researching reading have become blurred. Perhaps this has happened in your life story too? Have your personal practices and intense enthusiasm for something influenced your own scholarly enquiries?

The impact work has raised new questions for me as a researcher too. Teachers in the Reading Groups have shown energy and commitment, but they have found it hard to track the progression and development of children’s affective engagement, attitudes and behaviours as readers. So I am working with teachers to understand how to document the subtle nature of readers’ identity shifts. We cannot measure their pleasure, but researchers, working in collaboration with the profession, can surely find ways forward.

Looking back, I can see there are intriguing connections between my own childhood passion for reading and my later research enquiries. Fuelled in part by life experience and personal interest, I have come to study an aspect of my own life—my reading identity—and to explore the possibility that our identities as literate adults have salience for those we work with in classrooms. In building reader relationships and sharing their reading identities, Reading Teachers appear to hold up a mirror to their own practices as readers and in the process learn more about what real readers do. They then consider the pedagogical consequence of this new understanding and act to enable young readers to exert their rights as readers. This, my research indicates, impacts on their pleasure.

Writing this chapter has also prompted me to consider if my reading research has fed my personal reading practices. It is certainly the case that I remain an avid reader, I always have an adult and a children’s book on the go, spend far too much money on books, and have been a member of a book group for over 20 years. In that context, whilst I can never turn my researcher’s mind completely off, I try to participate as an adult reader and friend, not an academic. The group though is undoubtedly a micro community of readers, and attending provokes my thinking, raising new questions about the nature of reading.

Whilst I swapped Jackie and Mandy comics with my friends many years ago and hid them from mum, the emotional pleasure I experienced reading them, the connections I made to my life and the lives of the characters within them—real and fictional—helped shape me as a reader. At the time of reading and sharing them with friends I was unaware of the place these texts would play on my life journey, but I can see now that the social, affective and relational nature of this small weekly reading practice helped sustain us, both as readers and as friends.

Such retrospective insights about the highly social, situated and contextual nature of reading have been evidenced in much of my empirical research in classrooms, although it has taken the writing of this chapter to fully recognise this. It is now clearer to me that the social environment, our literacy histories, others’ perceptions of us as readers and our interactions around reading, influence our attitudes to and understanding of what it might mean to be a reader in particular contexts. As this chapter documents, my sense of identity as a reader waxed and waned, burgeoned and bloomed at different times over the decades depending on my relationships and work contexts. As educators and researchers, we need to pay more attention to this complexity and enable policy makers to acknowledge this too. Readers’ identities matter.

I wonder if my writing has caused you too to recollect your own reading history and identity and consider not dissimilar issues? Perhaps in encountering my journey as a child reader to a reading researcher, you have begun to look back on your life story, to consider the passions and pleasures which shaped your life journey—whether that be an enthusiasm for music, sport, reading, or a concern with injustice or equality for instance. Can we really leave our childhood selves, our early passions and practices behind? I am not sure, though perhaps some people deliberately do so, eschewing the narratives of the past in order to shape alternative futures which allow new interests to blossom. Our life stories are not unlike the narratives found in fiction—rich, diverse and intriguing and there are always new stories waiting to be told.

Bishop, R.S. (1990). Mirrors, Windows and Sliding Glass Doors. Perspectives: Choosing and Using Books for the Classroom , 6 (3), pp. x-xi.

Clark, C. (2013). Children’s and Young People’s Reading Today. Findings from the 2012 National Literacy Trust’s annual survey. London: National Trust.

Commeyras, M., Bisplinghoff, B.S. and Olson, J. (2003). Teachers as Readers: Perspectives on the importance of reading in teachers’ classrooms and lives.  Newark: International Reading Association.

Cremin, T., Bearne, E., Mottram, M. and Goodwin, P. (2008b). Exploring teachers’ knowledge of children’s literature. Cambridge Journal of Education , 38(4): 449–64.

Cremin, T., Mottram, M., Collins, F., Powell, S. and Safford, K. (2009a). Teachers as readers: building communities of readers. Literacy 43 (1), pp. 11-19.

Cremin, T. Mottram, M. Powell, S, Collins R and Safford K. (2014). Building Communities of Engaged Readers: Reading for pleasure.  London and NY: Routledge

Cremin, T. and Swann, J. (2016). Literature in Common: Reading for Pleasure in School Reading Groups’ in Rothbauer , P., Skjerdingstad, K.I., McKechnie, L.. Oterholm, K. (Eds). Plotting the Reading Experience: Theory/Practice/ Politics . pp. 279-300. Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press.

Cremin, T. and Swann, J. (2017). School librarians as facilitators of extracurricular reading groups in J. Pihl, K. Skinstad van der Kooij and T.C. Carlsten (Eds). Teacher and Librarian Partnerships in Literacy Education in the 21st Century,  pp. 118-137. Olso: Sense Publishers: New Voices and New Knowledge in Educational Research.

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2002). Flow: The Classic Work on How to Achieve Happiness . London: Rider.

Hempel-Jorgensen, A., Cremin, T., Harris D. and Chamberlain, L. (2018). Pedagogy for reading for pleasure in low socio-economic primary schools: beyond ‘pedagogy of poverty’? Literacy 52 (2): 86-94.

Kucirkova, N. and Cremin, T. (2017) Personalised reading for pleasure with digital libraries: Towards a pedagogy of practice and design. Cambridge Journal of Education 1-19.

Mackey, M. (2016). One Child Reading: My Auto-bibliography.  Edmonton: the University of Alberta Press.

Robinson, K. (2009). The Element: How finding your passion changes everything. London, Allen lane.

Rosenblatt, L. (1995). Literature as Exploration. New York: Modern Languages Association of America.

Twist, L., Schagan, I. and Hogson, C. (2007). Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS): Reader and Reading National Report for England 2006. London: NFER and DCSF.

Waller, A. (2019). Rereading Childhood Books: A Poetics: Perspectives on children’s literature.  London, Bloomsbury.

Voices of Practice Copyright © 2021 by Teresa Cremin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Want a good grade on your essay? Instructors and testing agencies assign a lot of personal experience-type essays, so it is worth your time to know how to write one easily and effectively so that you get a top score.

The reason these types of assignments are given so often is that anyone can write about their own experience, and it doesn't require any outside resources or research. However, even though anyone can tell a story about their life, that does not mean anyone can write a good essay about that experience. As a professor and teacher for 30 years, I've read thousands of essays and can tell you there is a distinct difference between telling a story about yourself and writing an excellent personal experience essay. The difference between good and great:

• Top essays paint a vivid picture of the experience so the reader feels they are there.
• Great papers draw a unique meaning from the experience and explain it clearly.
• The best papers are well-organized.

This article tells you how to do all that!

Write about a conflict. When is a time you lost? What person have you had conflicts with?

Ryan McGuire CC0 Public Domain via Pixaby

How to Find Significance

Writing an essay about a personal experience or relationship can be a powerful way of both discovering the meaning of your own past and sharing that past with others. When you write about something in your past, you have two perspectives:

• Your perspective in the present.
• The perspective you had at the time the true event occurred.

The space between these perspectives is usually where you will find significance in that event or relationship.

Choosing Memories to Write About

If the event or relationship is recent, you will be closer to the "you" that experienced the event. If the event is more distant, you will often find yourself reflecting on the experience, your reactions, and the meaning of the experience differently. As you write the essay, you will need to decide if you want to talk about the experience as you see it now or as you saw it then. Often, you may do both of those things or use your perspective now as the conclusion.

Example At the end of 8th grade, my best friend wrote me a note saying she never wanted to be my friend again. All summer, I was devastated and terribly depressed, terrified to start High School alone. Forty years later, I realize that that experience was probably what made me finally reach out to develop new friends. Those friends encouraged me to develop my life-long interest in speech, theater, and writing. More importantly, that experience of rejection gave me a lifelong compassion for others. — VirginiaLynne

Topic Ideas

Any event from your past can be a good topic if it is important to you. You can use either a one-time event, a recurring event, a person, or a place. Brainstorm ideas by thinking about the following:

• A relationship with an important person like a grandparent or best friend.
• A single encounter with someone that changed you.
• An event that was small but significant.
• A major, life-changing event.
• Something that you did over and over that was meaningful to you.
• Your experience and memories of a place that embodies who you are or has meaning for you.
• A time you were scared but overcame your fear.
• An ending of a relationship, activity, or event.
• A beginning of something new.
• A time you felt embarrassed or guilty.

Is Your Topic Right for the Paper?

To make sure you have a good topic, you need to determine what the meaning of that event or person was for you. To help you get ideas about the meaning and to decide whether this topic is a good choice, jot down some notes answering the following five questions:

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• What did I think the meaning of the experience was when it happened?
• How have my thoughts about it changed?
• What did I learn?
• How has my life direction been affected by this event?
• Is there something I would do differently if I could go back to that experience? Any regrets?

Easy Organization

Why reinvent the wheel? Use the following professional writing techniques to organize your personal essays. These strategies aren't secret and they aren't hard. They are what you've seen over and over in books and movies. Now you need to use them yourself.

Chronological Organization

This is the most obvious way to tell the story. You just tell it in the way it happened in the order it happened. Most of the other organizing techniques use this way to tell the main part of the story. See Anne Dillard's "Handed My Own Life" for a good example of the chronological organization of a personal essay.

Characteristics of this organization strategy:

• Tells the story in the order that it happened.
• Tells the story suspensefully—least important events leading to more important ones and finally coming to climax.
• Explains meaning after climax or lets events show the meaning. For example, Dillard states her understanding in a series of phrases, such as "I was handed my own life," and "my days were my own to plan and fill" along with a lot of specific details of how she did that. Of course, she also uses the title to explain her meaning.

Expectations Unfulfilled

Want an easy way to organize your essay? Try the "Expectations Unfulfilled" technique. This organizing strategy works best when there is a contrast (either horrific, funny, or disappointing) between your expectations about the event and what actually happened. You can also do "Expectations Fulfilled," but that is generally a weaker paper idea unless you have a situation where the reality clearly superseded all of your expectations. Rick Bragg's "100 Miles an Hour, Upside Down and Sideways" is a good example of this kind of essay organization.

Characteristics of Expectations Unfulfilled

• Introduction vividly describes expectations for a particular event . Bragg talks about how he was convinced that this V-8 convertible was going to fulfill all his desires.
• Maybe foreshadow the problem. Bragg's uncle warns him to be careful because "That'un could kill you."
• Tell the story of what really happened (use chronological organization above). Bragg tells of a race and an accident which wrecked his beloved car and ruined forever his enjoyment of speed and racing.
• Describe the contrast between reality and expectations . Bragg's memories of the crash are the radio still playing and being pulled out unscratched. He also remembers being famous not for having the best car but for being the kid who survived a 100-mile crash.
• Reflection on experience. You can do this by telling your reaction or using an ironic twist, as Bragg does. Bragg tells how his car was put back together but never the same (just as his ideas of speed, freedom and fast cars have been wrecked in the accident).
• Conclude with irony. An ironic end can sometimes be a good conclusion for this sort of story. Braggs writes that after his car gets rear-ended at the Piggly Wiggly supermarket, he sells it in disgust to a preacher's kid who "drove the speed limit."

Frame Organization Strategy

Using a frame story for the introduction and conclusion should be familiar to you from lots of movies. One good example of a story frame is Up. In this case, the movie opens with the frame of Carl looking at the scrapbook Ellie has made for him about their life and dreams before flashing to the present story of Carl and Russell and their adventures. The movie returns to the frame at the end of the movie as Carl looks at the last page of the photobook Ellie has made for him. He learns that it was the journey of the relationship which was the real adventure.

Another kind of frame can be a flashback. In this technique, you start in the middle of the action (or after it is over) and then flash back to an earlier memory. The Notebook uses the story of a man spending time with his wife with Alzheimer's as the frame for him re-telling the story of their romance.

The advantage of using a frame is that it makes it easier for you to talk about the meaning of the story, especially if you use the present day to flashback to the past. Be sure the frame is not just random. There should be an event, object, conversation, or situation which causes you to flashback in memory.

Internal and External Conflicts

With this technique, you organize your story around what is happening internally in your mind versus what is happening in the event. Of course, like "Expectations Unfulfilled," this works best if there is a conflict between what is happening in your thoughts and what is happening in the situation.

An example of this could be a wedding that seemed to be a joyous celebration but which was full of conflict for the bride who wondered whether she had made the right choice in marrying this man. Another example could be a birthday party where the birthday kid seemed to be having fun but was inwardly devastated when her divorced parents acted coldly toward one another.

Student Sample

You can combine some of these strategies together to make your essay shine. A good example of this is the student essay "Calling Home" by Jean Brandt. Along with using a frame, Brandt also uses internal and external conflicts in her organization.

• Introduction: beginning frame story. Brandt's essay has her ride to the mall.
• First conflict and resolution: Brandt has an internal conflict about whether she should steal and the resolution that she will.
• Second conflict and resolution: Brandt's second conflict is external when she is caught by the store owner and he calls the police.
• Third conflict and resolution: Brandt's third conflict is both internal and external. She wonders how her parents will react. She is brought to the police station but not punished by her parents. She realizes that disappointing them and realizing she had made the wrong choice is worse than if they had punished her.
• Conclusion: Ending frame and expectations unfulfilled. Brandt ends in another car ride home, which parallels the ride to the mall in the introduction. The twist is that not only was the mall trip not what she expected, but she has also disappointed the expectations of her parents.

Small Events Can Make Good Essays

Brandt's essay illustrates how to take a single, small incident and turn it into an essay that explains how she learned something about herself. It is a coming-of-age essay. When thinking about your own essay topic, try to think about moments in your life that were important turning points. The event can be something small and doesn't have to be dramatic. What is important is the significance of that event in your life. See the chart below for some ideas.

Memories of Times When You...

Do you have a favorite memory of your father? Of sports? Of childhood?

VirginiaLynne CC-BY via HubPages

Tips for Chronological Organization

Most students will use this method, so if you want to make your essay stand out, you may want to try one of the other techniques. When you do use this method, remember:

• Where's the conflict? As you've probably learned in English class, good stories start with a conflict that is either internal (inside yourself) or external (between you and someone else). Good stories show the development of the conflict, the crisis (called a climax) and then the resolution of what happens afterward (either good or bad). Make sure your story follows this pattern.
• Don't add unnecessary details. You need to "clip" the memory effectively. Imagine yourself as a film editor. What needs to be in the story? What can you leave out?
• Make details specific and interesting. Make your descriptions of the setting, characters, and action concrete and specific. For example:

Don't say, "Maura was a beautiful but boring blonde bombshell."

Say, "Maura was a sleek, 5 foot 10, long-haired blonde who never tired of talking about her exotic vacations or newest boyfriend."

• Keep boredom at bay. Give enough details like setting and character development that the reader is drawn into the story, but don't spend so much time in details that your reader gets bored.
• Action and dialogue are best. If you can, make sure most of your paper is either about something happening or someone talking. Both action and dialogue move the story along faster than description.

Metaphor Organization

Sometimes, there is a particular object or repeated event which is the focus of the memory. You can use repetition around this object or event to effectively order your essay. "On Being a Real Westerner" by Tobias Wolff is a good example of using a metaphor to organize.

Characteristics of this organization:

• Several memories relating to one object, person, or emotion. In Wolff's story, these memories are related to his rifle: getting the rifle, his mother's objections, playing with the rifle, acting as a sniper, loading rifle, Vietnam comparison-power, killing squirrel, his mother's reaction to the death of the squirrel, his own reaction, and his continued fascination with the rifle.
• Memories are often chronological but also should be climactic , with the most important memory last. In Wolff's story, the climax is when he shoots the squirrel and has to deal with the reality of what owning and using a rifle really means, or what it really means to "be a westerner."
• Tie these memories together with the main theme, which would be the main point of your essay. Wolff ties his memories together with the theme of power, the power of the rifle, how the hunger for power shaped him, and his powerlessness to change the past, "a man can't help the boy."

Did you have a moment when you felt carefree? When you returned to childhood? When you did something crazy?

GLady CC0 via Public Domain via Pixaby

Organizing Essay About a Person

Generally, it helps to keep the essay focused on one to three important memories about that person. These memories can be specific events (best), or anecdotes about events that happened repeatedly. Characteristics of this sort of essay:

1. Vivid Portrait of Person

• Dialogue (the reader can hear how this person talks).
• Describe a place that reflects the person (the reader can know about the interests of the person and picture them where you do).
• Person (describe what the person looks like).

2. Specific Memories

• Pick memories that show the person's character or reveal your relationship.
• Tell one-time incidents: every essay should have 1-3 of these. Describe the event in great detail, describing the scene, what happened, what people said, what you were feeling.
• Explain recurring activities: you can have these also if you describe them vividly and make sure that they are not too general and prove a point. Don't say, "My mother always scolded me." Instead, say: "My mother always scolded me about my messy habits," followed by an incident that describes how this affected your relationship.

3. Indication of the Person's Significance

Choose 1 or 2 main points to make: Trying to explain everything that person means to you is too much to do in a short essay.

All of your descriptions and all of your stories should be centered around proving these main points.

Other Organizing Strategies

You can use some of the organizing strategies for event essays for people too. Here are some suggestions:

I . Revelation/Expectations Reversed

• Your usual judgment about the person.
• Analysis of personality/physical description/some of background history.
• The revelation about them (story of a particular moment when you saw this person from a different perspective).

I I. Conflict and Resolution Organizing

• The story of a conflict you have with this person.
• Analysis of personality/physical description/background history.
• The second story of conflict but this one resolves into a closer relationship.
• Third story: conflict leads to a lesson learned.
• Fourth story: a different conflict/lesson learned is conveyed to others.

III. Comparison and Contrast

Notice that both views are found in each paragraph or section. This paper is ordered thematically. Another possibility is to talk about all the views of another person first, then talk about your views.

• Introduction: Description of person and set-up of contrast between you.
• Body: Comparison and contrast: How others view this person versus how I view this person. Or how I used to view that person versus how I now view them.
• Conclusion: How I have come to see this person.

This content is accurate and true to the best of the author’s knowledge and is not meant to substitute for formal and individualized advice from a qualified professional.

Questions & Answers

Question: What is the best way to start my essay?

Answer: One really good way is to just start writing down everything you can think of that has to do with that personal experience: sights, sounds, memories, smells, and feelings. When you do this sort of brainstorming, you don't have to worry about grammar or even writing complete sentences. Just write a list of everything you can remember. Sometimes people make this using a web, with the main idea in the middle and lines going out to show the connecting ideas. Whichever way you write it, this brainstorm list gives you a start for your ideas.

After that, you will need to organize your information in order to write the essay. You can use the ideas in this article for that. You might also want to look at some of my other articles and my Personal Experience Essay example that is linked to this article. Another good article to look at is "How to Write a Great Thesis for your Essay."

Question: Do you think "Describe some memorable things that happened to you recently, and tell why these experiences were meaningful to you?" would make a good essay topic?

Answer: Your question is basically the main idea of most personal experience essays which have to do with recalling a specific experience. I always suggest that to make a good essay, students focus on a very specific moment in time. Try to describe that experience so that the reader feels they are there.

Question: What is the best way to start my essay about my experience at a deaf/blind school?

Answer: 1. Expectations: describe what you were expecting before you went. This introduction technique is especially effective if your expectations were reversed.

2. Vivid description: Tell the scene in vivid sensory detail, perhaps focusing on the setting or on one or two children.

3. Background: tell what you have experienced previously which sets you up for this experience.

Question: What would be a good way to write about a coup d'etat that I have experienced?

Answer: Start with your feelings about your country before this event, or with your feelings right now. Then go to the event and conclude with how this even affected your life and also your country for better or worse.

Question: I am a native of Uganda, and at one point lived in poverty. What would be a good way to write about my experience in an essay?

Answer: Start by telling a story of a time when you were living in poverty. You might want to start in the present moment when you see someone else living in poverty and then flashback to a story about your own life. Then come back to the present moment and tell how you feel about the time in your life now, and what you have learned from the experiences you had. You also might want to talk about how that has changed you and influenced your thinking and how you act now. If you want, you can end with something like helping out the person you see, or encouraging your reader to think, act, or believe something different about poverty.

Question: How do I think of something to write about? Like something that left a mark in my life?

Answer: Many events, large and small, can make good essays. My sample essay takes a small event, going to the beach, and expands on the meaning that has had in my life. Often, the easiest and best essays are written about something which is ordinary but which has shaped you. That can be a place you visit all the time, a family tradition, a place that makes you feel peaceful, or a one-time event which you feel changed your direction in life.

Sometimes, students worry that they don't have any dramatic story to tell. However, I often find that the dramatic stories (especially if they are recent) are harder for students to actually pull the meaning out of. In fact, some large events in our lives are things we don't fully understand until we are much older (like a parent's divorce or the loss of a loved one).

One way to get a topic is to think about your emotions towards something or some place or memory. If you have strong emotions, then you will probably have a meaning you can draw from that experience.

Question: For a personal essay, is an experience better if it is something that you think has only ever happened to you?

Answer: An experience essay can be written about an experience that is unique, but it doesn't have to be. Your experience and reaction will be interesting to the reader if it is something that they have not experienced, but it may actually be more interesting to them if they have also experienced something similar. It is important to think about that while you write. You might want to say things like:

"Many people may have experienced something similar.."

"My experience was unique to me, but other people may share this type of experience..." or

"What the experience meant to me was

Even though this is something other people may have experienced, I had never thought it would happen to me..."

Question: In a school project, they asked us to take a self-help habit and pretend it was written about you and your life. We need to write a page in our book about that. How do I do this?

Answer: You probably need to talk with the instructor. Since I am not familiar with what your book is supposed to include, I can't offer specific information. However, it sounds to me as if you are supposed to describe yourself as doing this self-help habit and tell how this habit changes your life for the better.

Question: I would like to write about my sister's death. What would be a good way to introduce the topic?

Answer: I am very sorry for the loss of your sister, but I think that in writing about it you can use both share about her life with others and also help your own grieving process.

You can an essay about someone who has died at the moment you learn she is ill, or has passed away. Or you can start it at the funeral and then flash back to her death and explain along the way how that affected you and what she meant to you. However, often the best way to start this sort of essay is to tell a short, favorite story about your sister which explains her importance in your life. Then you can flash forward to some point in time which involves the main story and tell about that experience. Your conclusion can tie those two stories together as you use the first story to explain the effect her death has had on you.

Question: What are easy words one can use to enter and exit a flashback?

Answer: You need to use a time transition word or phrase which tells the reader it is in the past, such as "seven years ago," or "when I was twelve." You can also just tell the reader you are remembering: "Looking at the night sky made me remember..." or "The look on her face made me remember when..." Coming out of the flashback, you will probably start a new paragraph and say something like: "The meaning of this memory is clear to me when...," Now I know that..., "Looking back I can say that..." For more transitional phrases, see my article: https://hubpages.com/academia/Words-to-Use-in-Star...

Question: I need to write an article about my experience as a TB patient. What is the best way to start my article?

Answer: Start with a story that illustrates the main point you want to make, or which startles the reader with your experiences. Perhaps you can tell about when you got the disease, or how people reacted to hearing you were ill. Another possibility is to start with the story of a good or bad experience with the health care system.

Question: What is a good topic on the subject of stresses in life?

Answer: Stress is a common experience and writing a paper about your personal experiences with stressful situations is an interesting idea. Here are some topic ideas:

What I learned from stress at work.

How I've learned that families can add to a student's stress.

What parents could do better to help their children overcome stress about school.

How social media increases stress in adolescents.

How animals can help you overcome stress.

How I've dealt with stress in my schoolwork.

Why college students shouldn't worry so much about stress from tests.

How stress leads to panic attacks and strategies I've learned to remain calm.

How friends can help each other overcome stress.

How disrupted or inadequate sleep affects our ability to handle stress.

Do essential oils really help people deal with stress?

Is our microbiome important in dealing with stressful life situations?

Does stress really cause people to be infertile?

How important is exercise and eating to enduring stressful situations?

Can you learn to be more resilient in a stressful situation?

How can you learn to slow down and enjoy life?

What is the best way to handle big disappointments and roadblocks?

How can you stop worrying about what other people think?

Question: What is the best way to start my essay of experiencing life on a farm?

Answer: I think the best way of starting a farm essay is to tell a story. You can either tell a typical morning or a typical day of your life on the farm or tell a story of a dramatic event like the birth of a calf or a difficult time with crops or weather. The story you tell should relate to the meaning you want to express to the reader at the end of the essay. For example, if you want to explain how living on a farm has made you an independent thinker and able to deal with a crisis effectively, you can start with a story that shows you doing that, or shows a time when the circumstances forced you to develop those character qualities. If you want to explain the beauty of living in nature on a farm, you can tell a story of what it is like to see the sunrise each day, or tell what it is like to walk along the land of your property and explain in vivid sensory detail what you see, hear, smell and feel.

Question: What is the best way to start my essay about my experience with adapting to a new country with a new language and culture?

Answer: Start with a conversation or story about a time that you either misunderstood someone, or they misunderstood you. To make this most effective, try to choose a time which was either funny or embarrassing.

Question: Is personal experience about traveling a good topic?

Answer: Writing about your personal experience while traveling is not only an excellent topic, it is a genre all of its own. Rick Steeves is a radio commentator who has on guests each week who give travelogue experiences as well as recommendations. What you need to do for a good travel experience paper is to describe a few things very vividly and then explain how those experiences impacted your life. You might talk about something you saw, someone you met, or some part of history you came to understand. Another thing you can use is the experience of traveling and what you learned about yourself.

Question: What are the points to consider while writing my story on how I almost got molested by a neighbor?

Answer: Quite honestly, I would be very cautious in writing a story about this if it is for a class. You would have to be careful with the language you used and want to be sure you did not cause undue stress to another person who may have faced actual abuse. I always tell my students that writing about anything deeply personal is a wonderful idea because it helps you to come to a better understanding of how that particular incident affected your life. However, writing about a deeply personal event for a class is the same as writing it for the public because lots of other people may see this if you are doing any sort of peer editing in the class. If only the teacher sees it, you may have a different situation. However, I think the best thing to do is to talk to your instructor.

Question: "Describe your experiences with issues of diversity." How would one answer this question?

Answer: Generally talking about your experiences with diversity means giving examples of times when you had encounters with people who are different from you in race, socio-economic status, culture, or some other life experience which you are not familiar with.

Question: How can I set a scene in my personal experience essay for a student not willing to go the gym?

Answer: An excellent way to set a scene of conflict is to use dialogue. You could have the teacher telling the class what to do and then talking with the student who says they do not want to go. Then you can tell the inner thoughts of the teacher about the situation. Many times, I find that my students are reluctant to write dialogue because they aren't sure how to write it, so I've written an article about that: https://letterpile.com/writing/Punctuation-of-Conv... You will probably also want to look at my example of a reflection essay for help.

Question: Concerning writing a personal experience essay, is it possible to write about a person you lost?

Answer: While I always suggest that people check with their instructor to find out if there are any restrictions in the assignment, I would say that writing about a person you have lost through either death or another circumstance like moving away, divorce, or a broken friendship can be a good topic for a personal experience essay. Often, we learn a lot as we think about these experiences of loss and I've often found that writing about this type of topic can be not only meaningful to students but also healing.

Saima Baig on July 16, 2018:

How do you write a personal experience about a special trip?

Virginia Kearney (author) from United States on March 15, 2018:

Hi Vanessa, everything you need to write your essay is here on my website. I have over 100 articles that explain how to pick a good topic, how to write your thesis and outline and how to give good examples. You will learn and get better in English if you apply yourself and practice! Here is an idea for your essay: start with a story in the present about a problem you encounter in the class, such as a student who is having trouble learning the material or a discipline problem. In the next few paragraphs, give examples from your past teaching that show how you have learned to handle this sort of problem. Then conclude the essay with a paragraph showing how your continuing experiences make you realize that you can overcome this current situation and will become even better as you continue to teach.

Vanessa on March 14, 2018:

I just need help to write an essay for my experience in teaching in the past,present and future. My english are no perfect if your willing to help me with .Im willing to learned from you.

[email protected] on December 30, 2017:

I want to write about something you did interesting with your friend

Virginia Kearney (author) from United States on September 24, 2017:

Hi, Ronald-The best topic is something that you know the meaning of easily, but not something that makes you very emotional, or which is hard to talk about. Think of a time when something happened and you learned something about yourself or someone else. Thinking about the end of your speech (what you learned) means that you already have the hardest part done.

Ronald on September 24, 2017:

Hi what is the best topic to write an personal speech and i'll perform it in my teachers and in my classmates

Virginia Kearney (author) from United States on August 28, 2017:

Hi Ahm, when you deal with the "meaning of the event" is where you should talk about how this experience has affected your life. Generally, you would want to explain the meaning and how it changed you. As far as how long this part should be, I would advise you to give enough detail so that the reader understands the changes it made to you but avoid being overly personal about things you may not want everyone to know or which might reflect badly on another person. Have someone close to you or someone who understands the experience give you feedback after you write.

Ahm muj on August 28, 2017:

Do you have any tips for how can I write a personal account of how the ordeal has affected my life?

I'd like ask if I should describe the ordeal prolongedly or briefly.

Virginia Kearney (author) from United States on May 27, 2017:

Hi, Jorge--I actually have over 100 different articles about writing posted on Letterpile and HubPages, so generally you can find what you are looking for if you search for it. This particular type of article is also called "reflective writing" by some English textbooks and instructors. I think what you are looking for is this article: https://letterpile.com/writing/Reflective-Essay-Sa... which focuses on the example and gives you a full essay.

Jorge Lopez on May 27, 2017:

This is like watching a video about making a soufflé and only hearing people describe how it tastes or how hard it was to make.

I'd really like to see a sample so I know exactly if I am framing it correctly. Do I write it like an editorial? Do I write it like a 3rd grader? I get it. It's subjective. Show me some examples of subjective papers. Walk me through it.

Essay Peer on November 22, 2016:

The setting of a novel or play often plays a big role in the overall telling of the story. Below are tips on how to write a settings essay:

• State your overall theme

• Write your introduction

• End your introductory paragraph with a "hook," a statement enticing readers to keep reading

• Write the body of the essay one paragraph at a time

• Conclude the essay to tie together all of your points and reiterate your theme

Suzette Gray from Cambridge, Ontario, Canada on October 21, 2015:

I have now finished my very hard personal experience essay. As it is only for my best friend I will not be posting it anywhere. Thank you VirginiaLynne for your comments and your inspiration. The only thing left to do is to show it to my friend and I must admit that I am being a bit of a chicken in doing this, but I will do it. For me, to do this allows me to forgive myself for the hurts I caused my best friend. I thank you again.

Virginia Kearney (author) from United States on October 20, 2015:

Hi Watson. Your comment does make sense to anyone who has struggled in making a relationship work, and that is most of us!

Suzette Gray from Cambridge, Ontario, Canada on October 20, 2015:

Thanks so much VirginiaLynne. Believe it or not the person I am writing about and the person who is trying to get me on the right track are one and the same and I very much appreciate his critique. I know why he is being tough on me and I too am being tough on myself. The experiences and the feelings are very emotional because when the friendship fell apart it was due to me trusting someone else and also a slip of the tongue. Needless to say I don't trust as easily now. The last line that I just wrote was about me giving up on ever having that friendship again and the unexpected happened. We are now friends but on a totally different level now than before. Writing about it is hard and I know that he wants me to be honest as he has been. I start writing and I can't stop. It is a friendship of over 3 and half years. It is hard to cut back on it so that it fits essay requirements. Thank you for your input and it is much appreciated. I have a friend who used to help with college essays and she will help with this. She also knows what I am writing about. Thanks again. I don't know if this even makes any sense

Hi Watson--I appreciate your comment. One thing that is very difficult to do is to separate your feelings and experience from the piece of writing about that experience. It is very easy to feel that the piece we write is really a part of ourselves and that any criticism of that piece is a criticism of us. Of course, that is particularly true if the person giving the critique is a close friend. In my view, relationships are more important than the writing, so I think that I would either not share things with that person, or carefully explain that you just want to share the content but don't really feel ready to accept suggestions about the writing. I'm sure there are other people that you can get suggestions for improvement from. It might be that the same suggestions coming from someone else would be helpful rather than hurtful. However, as an overall help in developing your writing, I suggest that you try to grow into the idea that what you write is a thing you produce, which can be done better or worse some days and which can generally always be improved. Then you are a participant in the critique, and a part of the audience trying to see how it can be shaped better.

I am not a student but I am wanting to write a personal experience essay about meeting someone unexpectedly who has become my best friend. This person has inspired me to better myself in a lot of ways. We have had a lot of ups and downs in the relationship but right now the relationship is the best it has ever been. He is in college at the age of 45 and that in itself is inspiring. I have sent this friend a few essays but he is being very critical. I know he wants me to really think about it and it is going to be very emotional for me. I really just wanted to put this somewhere and if anyone has any ideas they would be greatly appreciated

Virginia Kearney (author) from United States on July 22, 2015:

Ii actually advise students to avoid using quotes to start an essay. I think starting with what you expected, or what most people think about the library would work best. Another way you could introduce this is with a conversation with someone about using the library or by remembering the library you used as a child and comparing it to this college library. A final way to do the introduction is by starting with a very detailed description of the library. They you can talk about what your story is and what it meant to you.

Mary Norton from Ontario, Canada on February 13, 2015:

I have written some personal experience but it was a hit and miss. This time, you have given me a platform to write them.

Virginia Kearney (author) from United States on November 04, 2013:

So very sorry Mary to hear about your loss. I think you could use a frame story for this sort of essay. Start perhaps with a memory right now about taking care of things and maybe feeling frustrated about this or seeing something which reminds you of your mom. Then go back in time and talk about your mom dying. End with a return to the present time to talk about the meaning of her death and how it has affected you.

Mary on November 04, 2013:

I need help on how to start my personal essay off. It is going to be about my mum dying in March of this year and me taking on the responsibility of taking over the house and getting left to look after our two pets and my little sister . How would I go about starting this?

heart4theword from hub on August 16, 2011:

Some specifics to think about, in writing your essay. Thanks for sharing.

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Exploring a Lifelong Love for Reading and Writing

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Essays About Reading: 5 Examples And Topic Ideas

As a writer, you love to read and talk to others about reading books. Check out some examples of essays about reading and topic ideas for your essay.

Many people fall in love with good books at an early age, as experiencing the joy of reading can help transport a child’s imagination to new places. Reading isn’t just for fun, of course—the importance of reading has been shown time and again in educational research studies.

If you love to sit down with a good book, you likely want to share your love of reading with others. Reading can offer a new perspective and transport readers to different worlds, whether you’re into autobiographies, books about positive thinking, or stories that share life lessons.

When explaining your love of reading to others, it’s important to let your passion shine through in your writing. Try not to take a negative view of people who don’t enjoy reading, as reading and writing skills are tougher for some people than others.

Talk about the positive effects of reading and how it’s positively benefitted your life. Offer helpful tips on how people can learn to enjoy reading, even if it’s something that they’ve struggled with for a long time. Remember, your goal when writing essays about reading is to make others interested in exploring the world of books as a source of knowledge and entertainment.

Now, let’s explore some popular essays on reading to help get you inspired and some topics that you can use as a starting point for your essay about how books have positively impacted your life.

For help with your essays, check out our round-up of the best essay checkers

Examples Of Essays About Reading

• 1. The Book That Changed My Life By The New York Times
• 2. I Read 150+ Books in 2 Years. Here’s How It Changed My Life By Anangsha Alammyan
• 3. How My Diagnosis Improved My College Experience By Blair Kenney

4. How ‘The Phantom Tollbooth’ Saved Me By Isaac Fitzgerald

5. catcher in the rye: that time a banned book changed my life by pat kelly, topic ideas for essays about reading, 1. how can a high school student improve their reading skills, 2. what’s the best piece of literature ever written, 3. how reading books from authors of varied backgrounds can provide a different perspective, 4. challenging your point of view: how reading essays you disagree with can provide a new perspective.

1.  The Book That Changed My Life  By  The New York Times

“My error the first time around was to read “Middlemarch” as one would a typical novel. But “Middlemarch” isn’t really about plot and dialogue. It’s all about character, as mediated through the wise and compassionate (but sharply astute) voice of the omniscient narrator. The book shows us that we cannot live without other people and that we cannot live with other people unless we recognize their flaws and foibles in ourselves.”  The New York Times

In this collection of reader essays, people share the books that have shaped how they see the world and live their lives. Talking about a life-changing piece of literature can offer a new perspective to people who tend to shy away from reading and can encourage others to pick up your favorite book.

2.  I Read 150+ Books in 2 Years. Here’s How It Changed My Life  By Anangsha Alammyan

“Consistent reading helps you develop your  analytical thinking skills  over time. It stimulates your brain and allows you to think in new ways. When you are  actively engaged  in what you’re reading, you would be able to ask better questions, look at things from a different perspective, identify patterns and make connections.” Anangsha Alammyan

Alammyan shares how she got away from habits that weren’t serving her life (such as scrolling on social media) and instead turned her attention to focus on reading. She shares how she changed her schedule and time management processes to allow herself to devote more time to reading, and she also shares the many ways that she benefited from spending more time on her Kindle and less time on her phone.

3.  How My Diagnosis Improved My College Experience  By Blair Kenney

“When my learning specialist convinced me that I was an intelligent person with a reading disorder, I gradually stopped hiding from what I was most afraid of—the belief that I was a person of mediocre intelligence with overambitious goals for herself. As I slowly let go of this fear, I became much more aware of my learning issues. For the first time, I felt that I could dig below the surface of my unhappiness in school without being ashamed of what I might find.” Blair Kenney

Reading does not come easily to everyone, and dyslexia can make it especially difficult for a person to process words. In this essay, Kenney shares her experience of being diagnosed with dyslexia during her sophomore year of college at Yale. She gave herself more patience, grew in her confidence, and developed techniques that worked to improve her reading and processing skills.

“I took that book home to finish reading it. I’d sit somewhat uncomfortably in a tree or against a stone wall or, more often than not, in my sparsely decorated bedroom with the door closed as my mother had hushed arguments with my father on the phone. There were many things in the book that went over my head during my first time reading it. But a land left with neither Rhyme nor Reason, as I listened to my parents fight, that I understood.” Isaac Fitzgerald

Books can transport a reader to another world. In this essay, Fitzgerald explains how Norton Juster’s novel allowed him to escape a difficult time in his childhood through the magic of his imagination. Writing about a book that had a significant impact on your childhood can help you form an instant connection with your reader, as many people hold a childhood literature favorite near and dear to their hearts.

“From the first paragraph my mind was blown wide open. It not only changed my whole perspective on what literature could be, it changed the way I looked at myself in relation to the world. This was heavy stuff. Of the countless books I had read up to this point, even the ones written in first person, none of them felt like they were speaking directly to me. Not really anyway.” Pat Kelly

Many readers have had the experience of feeling like a book was written specifically for them, and in this essay, Kelly shares that experience with J.D. Salinger’s classic American novel. Writing about a book that felt like it was written specifically for you can give you the chance to share what was happening in your life when you read the book and the lasting impact that the book had on you as a person.

There are several topic options to choose from when you’re writing about reading. You may want to write about how literature you love has changed your life or how others can develop their reading skills to derive similar pleasure from reading.

Middle and high school students who struggle with reading can feel discouraged when, despite their best efforts, their skills do not improve. Research the latest educational techniques for boosting reading skills in high school students (the research often changes) and offer concrete tips (such as using active reading skills) to help students grow.

It’s an excellent persuasive essay topic; it’s fun to write about the piece of literature you believe to be the greatest of all time. Of course, much of this topic is a matter of opinion, and it’s impossible to prove that one piece of literature is “better” than another. Write your essay about how the piece of literature you consider the best positive affected your life and discuss how it’s impacted the world of literature in general.

The world is full of many perspectives and points of view, and it can be hard to imagine the world through someone else’s eyes. Reading books by authors of different gender, race, or socioeconomic status can help open your eyes to the challenges and issues others face. Explain how reading books by authors with different backgrounds has changed your worldview in your essay.

It’s fun to read the information that reinforces viewpoints that you already have, but doing so doesn’t contribute to expanding your mind and helping you see the world from a different perspective. Explain how pushing oneself to see a different point of view can help you better understand your perspective and help open your eyes to ideas you may not have considered.

Tip: If writing an essay sounds like a lot of work, simplify it. Write a simple 5 paragraph essay instead.

If you’re stuck picking your next essay topic, check out our round-up of essay topics about education .

Amanda has an M.S.Ed degree from the University of Pennsylvania in School and Mental Health Counseling and is a National Academy of Sports Medicine Certified Personal Trainer. She has experience writing magazine articles, newspaper articles, SEO-friendly web copy, and blog posts.

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Reading and Writing Experiences Essay

• To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
• As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
• As a template for you assignment

To create a quality piece of writing, an author is to follow a wide range of strategies and adhere to some rules. To an inexperienced writer, this can feel like a rather exhausting practice. However, this is also an exercise that provides the training necessary for this individual to gain experience, develop useful skills, and memorize the most important points and aspects that make their writing easy to read, sophisticated, and captivating.

Throughout this course, I have had plenty of such exercises developing my reading and writing skills. This paper is a reflection on the reading and writing experiences I have had during the course, the biggest challenges, the perceived personal performance, and ideas for improvement.

Looking back at the essays I wrote throughout this course, I feel dissatisfied with some of my choices of strategies and expressions. I feel like I let myself down as a writer by failing to communicate my thoughts skillfully and comprehensively. As my essays were reflections and analyses of various readings, I got to learn how important the reading aspect was for my work. For example, writing about the article by Norland about Kurdish forces in Iraq, I noted that the author “uses a variety of vivid images and descriptive text to create a more personal perspective on the process”.

This was an observation made while reading the article, but I failed to provide enough examples, thus leaving this statement unsupported and weakening my writing. The employment of various reading strategies for the achievement of certain goals was one of the learning outcomes for this course. Doing my rhetorical analysis of Norland’s text, I focused on the content too much instead of providing a critical evaluation of the techniques and strategies used by the author.

The learning outcome regarding the application of reading strategies was practiced once again in my essay focused on the article by Nicholson about the famous athlete Billie Jean King. That essay was intended as a reflective analysis, and I attempted to tie its content to some general social phenomena. For example, discussing the lack of balance in attitudes to male and female athletes and sport performances, I noted “Of course, many things remain to be done as the world of sports is still unfair.

Women still get less money. Female sports receive less attention. Female leagues are even regarded as less professional than male leagues.” This way, I tried to add weight to the article’s content by showing its universality and timelessness. At the same time, I still see that the essay lacked critical thinking and looked more like a summary than analysis. Practically, having focused mainly on the attentive and thorough reading of the article selected for my essay, I managed to produce many interesting thoughts on the matter. However, it turned out to be quite challenging to integrate them into my essay.

In part, I believe the drawbacks of my writing to be inflicted by the weaknesses of my reading. Specifically, I tend to focus on the content of reading while missing out on the writing techniques used in it that could serve as helpful tips for my analysis as well as my work. One reading strategy that could help address this problem was notetaking. Discussing notetaking, Newkirk states that the “job is to give the page a close reading and mark word choices, sentence patterns, images, dialogue—anything… effective” (10).

Such an approach could benefit my analysis and critical thinking essay. Unfortunately, I neglected this strategy while working on some of my essays. I am a person who always has a lot to say, and this is supposed to make me a writer able to create interesting texts and express original opinions. However, due to the lack of organization in my work, the multitude of ideas that appear during reading become either confused or forgotten because I have not taken time to write them down.

Additionally, since I had trouble expressing my thoughts using standard written English, I believe that engaging in slow and focused reading as a leisure activity could also boost my self-improvement as a writer. Regarding reading, Whalen notes that “Slow readers list numerous benefits to a regular reading habit”. The author emphasizes the importance of reading as a tool for self-education, concentration training, and vocabulary enrichment.

To sum up, during this course, I faced challenges while creating essays focused on the analysis and synthesis of readings. To improve I need to practice writing as well as reading. The latter can help me improve my analysis and self-expression strategies. I will use the mistakes I made throughout this course and the problems that I faced as valuable lessons that will guide my further growth and development.

Works Cited

Newkirk, Thomas. “The Case for Slow Reading.” Educational Leadership , vol. 67, no. 6, 2010, pp. 6-11.

Whalen, Jeanne. “ Read Slowly to Benefit Your Brain and Cut Stress .” The Wall Street Journal . 2014. Web.

• Note-Taking and Crime Scene Photography
• Note Taking Systems in Comparison
• Listening, Reading, Note- and Test-Taking Strategies
• Personal Academic Writing Progress
• High School Alumni Foundation Start-Up Plan
• Embedding Plagiarism Education in the Assessment Process
• Paraphrasing and Quoting Special Education Articles
• Informal Reading Inventory as Literacy Assessment
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2021, March 23). Reading and Writing Experiences. https://ivypanda.com/essays/reading-and-writing-experiences/

"Reading and Writing Experiences." IvyPanda , 23 Mar. 2021, ivypanda.com/essays/reading-and-writing-experiences/.

IvyPanda . (2021) 'Reading and Writing Experiences'. 23 March.

IvyPanda . 2021. "Reading and Writing Experiences." March 23, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/reading-and-writing-experiences/.

1. IvyPanda . "Reading and Writing Experiences." March 23, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/reading-and-writing-experiences/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Reading and Writing Experiences." March 23, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/reading-and-writing-experiences/.

• Importance Of Reading Essay

Importance of Reading Essay

500+ words essay on reading.

Reading is a key to learning. It’s a skill that everyone should develop in their life. The ability to read enables us to discover new facts and opens the door to a new world of ideas, stories and opportunities. We can gather ample information and use it in the right direction to perform various tasks in our life. The habit of reading also increases our knowledge and makes us more intellectual and sensible. With the help of this essay on the Importance of Reading, we will help you know the benefits of reading and its various advantages in our life. Students must go through this essay in detail, as it will help them to create their own essay based on this topic.

Importance of Reading

Reading is one of the best hobbies that one can have. It’s fun to read different types of books. By reading the books, we get to know the people of different areas around the world, different cultures, traditions and much more. There is so much to explore by reading different books. They are the abundance of knowledge and are best friends of human beings. We get to know about every field and area by reading books related to it. There are various types of books available in the market, such as science and technology books, fictitious books, cultural books, historical events and wars related books etc. Also, there are many magazines and novels which people can read anytime and anywhere while travelling to utilise their time effectively.

Benefits of Reading for Students

Reading plays an important role in academics and has an impactful influence on learning. Researchers have highlighted the value of developing reading skills and the benefits of reading to children at an early age. Children who cannot read well at the end of primary school are less likely to succeed in secondary school and, in adulthood, are likely to earn less than their peers. Therefore, the focus is given to encouraging students to develop reading habits.

Reading is an indispensable skill. It is fundamentally interrelated to the process of education and to students achieving educational success. Reading helps students to learn how to use language to make sense of words. It improves their vocabulary, information-processing skills and comprehension. Discussions generated by reading in the classroom can be used to encourage students to construct meanings and connect ideas and experiences across texts. They can use their knowledge to clear their doubts and understand the topic in a better way. The development of good reading habits and skills improves students’ ability to write.

In today’s world of the modern age and digital era, people can easily access resources online for reading. The online books and availability of ebooks in the form of pdf have made reading much easier. So, everyone should build this habit of reading and devote at least 30 minutes daily. If someone is a beginner, then they can start reading the books based on the area of their interest. By doing so, they will gradually build up a habit of reading and start enjoying it.

Frequently Asked Questions on the Importance of Reading Essay

What is the importance of reading.

1. Improves general knowledge 2. Expands attention span/vocabulary 3. Helps in focusing better 4. Enhances language proficiency

What is the power of reading?

1. Develop inference 2. Improves comprehension skills 3. Cohesive learning 4. Broadens knowledge of various topics

How can reading change a student’s life?

1. Empathy towards others 2. Acquisition of qualities like kindness, courtesy

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Home — Essay Samples — Life — Reading Books — A Reflection on the Improvement in My Reading, Writing, and Learning

A Reflection on The Improvement in My Reading, Writing, and Learning

• Categories: Reading Books

About this sample

Words: 649 |

Published: Dec 11, 2018

Words: 649 | Page: 1 | 4 min read

Works Cited

• Anderson, P. (2017). Technical Communication: A Reader-Centered Approach. Cengage Learning.
• Bussmann, H., & A. Jansen, E. (2018). How to Write and Illustrate a Scientific Paper. Cambridge University Press.
• Graff, G., & Birkenstein, C. (2018). They Say / I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing. W. W. Norton & Company.
• Hacker, D. (2019). A Writer's Reference. Bedford/St. Martin's.
• Lunsford, A. A., & Ruszkiewicz, J. J. (2020). Everything's an Argument with Readings. Bedford/St. Martin's.
• McWhorter, K. T. (2018). Reading and Writing About Contemporary Issues. Bedford/St. Martin's.
• Oshima, A., & Hogue, A. (2018). Writing Academic English. Pearson Education.
• Rosen, L. D., & Lim, A. F. (2018). Writing for the Information Age: Elements of Style for the 21st Century. Cengage Learning.
• Strunk, W., Jr., & White, E. B. (2017). The Elements of Style. Penguin.
• Williams, J. M., & Colomb, G. G. (2020). Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace. Pearson Education.

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Academic Reading Strategies

Completing reading assignments is one of the biggest challenges in academia. However, are you managing your reading efficiently? Consider this cooking analogy, noting the differences in process:

Taylor’s process was more efficient because his purpose was clear. Establishing why you are reading something will help you decide how to read it, which saves time and improves comprehension. This guide lists some purposes for reading as well as different strategies to try at different stages of the reading process.

Purposes for reading

People read different kinds of text (e.g., scholarly articles, textbooks, reviews) for different reasons. Some purposes for reading might be

• to scan for specific information
• to skim to get an overview of the text
• to relate new content to existing knowledge
• to write something (often depends on a prompt)
• to critique an argument
• to learn something
• for general comprehension

Strategies differ from reader to reader. The same reader may use different strategies for different contexts because their purpose for reading changes. Ask yourself “why am I reading?” and “what am I reading?” when deciding which strategies to try.

Before reading

• Establish your purpose for reading
• Speculate about the author’s purpose for writing
• Review what you already know and want to learn about the topic (see the guides below)
• Preview the text to get an overview of its structure, looking at headings, figures, tables, glossary, etc.
• Predict the contents of the text and pose questions about it. If the authors have provided discussion questions, read them and write them on a note-taking sheet.
• Note any discussion questions that have been provided (sometimes at the end of the text)
• Sample pre-reading guides – K-W-L guide
• Critical reading questionnaire

During reading

• Annotate and mark (sparingly) sections of the text to easily recall important or interesting ideas
• Check your predictions and find answers to posed questions
• Use headings and transition words to identify relationships in the text
• Create a vocabulary list of other unfamiliar words to define later
• Try to infer unfamiliar words’ meanings by identifying their relationship to the main idea
• Connect the text to what you already know about the topic
• Take breaks (split the text into segments if necessary)
• Sample annotated texts – Journal article · Book chapter excerpt

After reading

• Summarize the text in your own words (note what you learned, impressions, and reactions) in an outline, concept map, or matrix (for several texts)
• Talk to someone about the author’s ideas to check your comprehension
• Identify and reread difficult parts of the text
• Define words on your vocabulary list (try a learner’s dictionary ) and practice using them
• Sample graphic organizers – Concept map · Literature review matrix

Works consulted

Grabe, W., & Stoller, F. L. (2002). Teaching and researching reading. Harlow: Longman.

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout (just click print) and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

If you enjoy using our handouts, we appreciate contributions of acknowledgement.

Sample details

• Words: 1244
• Views: 1,051

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My reading experience

This hebdomad. I have read seven articles. but merely Eudora Welty’s ‘One Writer’s Beginnings” left a deep feeling on me because it made me remember my ain reading experience and instruction procedure when I merely saw the rubric of this article. I could non state I am a author. but I think I am a wholly reading lover. After reading the “One Writer’s Beginnings” . I think there is a small spot similar between Eudora Welty’s childhood and mine. However. possibly I did non hold the gift of composing. or I did non work hard plenty. In another word. I do non hold any advantages on composing. Following. I would wish to speak about my reading experience. which include three parts. reading before spells to school. reading during school clip. self-reading experience. Remember my reading experience over the old ages. book told me narratives. learn me knowledge. and ever around me. so I have to state that reading is a really gratifying thing. Remember it was when I came to Seattle non long. that was a sunshine afternoon. a cup of tea was in my manus. Many childs were playing and larking on the grass in forepart of my flat.

That scene made me remember to my childhood. When I was four old ages old. my female parent read to me merely like Eudora Welt’s female parent did. I tried my best to remember the scene in my head. I was sad to state I was excessively immature at that clip. so I do non retrieve her tone when she was reading to me. but I still retrieve the scene at the clip. I remember her face when she was reading. her somewhat overturned corners of the oral cavity while Robinson Crusoe saved a individual and called him Friday. I remember the air current with a swoon odor of the sea when she read the Treasure Island to me. and her cunning eyes when she read DR. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Reading was the memorable portion of my childhood. and I had the preliminary apprehension of reading. I want to state that my female parent was the first instructor of my life who taught me to read. When I was older. my household had to travel from Beijing to the ancient capital Nanjing because my male parent changed his occupation. My household did non hold much money. we had to take the “green train” ( the slowest and oldest train in China. ever crowded. most of riders do non hold seats. non in service right now ) . and unfortunate I had to go forth all my books.

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Before we got on the train. my male parent bought me a really old book. the Three Kingdoms from a used books store. I had already known a few words at that clip. so my female parent allow me read by myself. which was the first clip I read without anyone’s aid. Indeed. I still did non plentiful of words. but it was truly aroused to state. I knew how to utilize a dictionary when I was immature. Until now. I still retrieve what the book looked like. it was non any images on the screen. merely the book’s name. “the Three kingdoms” on the dark bluish screen of the book. every page in this book was xanthous and unsmooth. the odor was non so good. it was smell like a mixture of soap and gasolene. However. I cherished this book. I slept with it. and sometimes I fantasized about the conflict scenes were described in the book. After that. I started to read some books that usage my father’s words “for men” . such as “the Art of War” . “the Old adult male and the Sea” and “the Sun Besides Rises” .

During my childhood. the books ever around me. they let me ever happy even in the tough environment. Furthermore. the books allow me understand this universe more than the other childs who were the same ages as me. I think these all attributed to my parents. Time flies. after lived in Nanjing for two old ages. Finally. I went to school. I was subsequently than other peer kids. At the beginning of the primary school. I could non accommodate to the reading method. Gradually. I started to recognize that reading in school was non for merriment. it was for analyzing. At school. I read a batch of articles and poesies such as Confucian Analects and Tang Poems. The classical Chinese is antic before I understood their thaumaturgy I did non believe it was reading. I even queried that is this Chinese? However. from the survey of bit by bit. I bit by bit could understand how beautiful are they. sometimes. Classical Chinese expresses artistic construct and feeling to depict a scene or a thing. Anyway. reading a classical Chinese’s article is an highly hard undertaking. except for the uncommon words. the most hard portion is experiencing.

It is deserving adverting that larning classical Chinese literature strengthened my foundation of reading and strengthened my apprehension of articles. allow me acquire the advantage on reading in the hereafter. Fortunately. they did non inquire me to read the classical Chinese article every twenty-four hours. I had found that I still can read for merriment even in school. I read a batch of Eastern and Western articles. the first book I read in school was Mark Twain’s the Adventures of Tom Sawyer. in this book I saw a existent individual who is guiltless and lively. is eager to take hazards. the chase of freedom called Tom Sawyer. After that. I started to read western literary classics such as Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen and Boule de Suif by Maupassant. For Eastern writer. I read about all of Lu Xun’s and Lao She’s articles. Lao She’s Rickshaw Boy was really celebrated. Reading this sort of literature allow me understand many things about our society and people.

The beautiful words in these articles aroused my desire for composing. In these old ages of reading experience. I tried to compose something by my ain. but my authorship accomplishments are non better any more. my female parent told me that I could compose a diary. I know it could be a good manner to better my composing accomplishments. but I ever lack a sort of doggedness to lodge to it. In my ain words. I think composing would be merriment. so I merely seek to compose something for merriment. and I besides think more reading will assist. Let me utilize the words from Eudora Welty’s One Writer’s Beginnings. “By now I do non cognize whether I could make either one. reading or authorship. without the other. ” I think here the writer points out that reading and composing is non separate. they are connected to each other. For me. I think I should compose pattern more for my authorship and have fun on that. For now. speak of my whole reading experience. no affair formal or informal. both are the cardinal hoarded wealth in my life. I hope one twenty-four hours. I can compose my narrative for other people to read. Possibly one twenty-four hours. I will hear the voice excessively. merely like Eudora Welty. In Eudora Welty’s article. she introduced the reading and composing experience to me. they are really worthy to me to larn.

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Reading is Good Habit for Students and Children

 500+ words essay on reading is good habit.

Reading is a very good habit that one needs to develop in life. Good books can inform you, enlighten you and lead you in the right direction. There is no better companion than a good book. Reading is important because it is good for your overall well-being. Once you start reading, you experience a whole new world. When you start loving the habit of reading you eventually get addicted to it. Reading develops language skills and vocabulary. Reading books is also a way to relax and reduce stress. It is important to read a good book at least for a few minutes each day to stretch the brain muscles for healthy functioning.

Benefits of Reading

Books really are your best friends as you can rely on them when you are bored, upset, depressed, lonely or annoyed. They will accompany you anytime you want them and enhance your mood. They share with you information and knowledge any time you need. Good books always guide you to the correct path in life. Following are the benefits of reading –

Self Improvement: Reading helps you develop positive thinking. Reading is important because it develops your mind and gives you excessive knowledge and lessons of life. It helps you understand the world around you better. It keeps your mind active and enhances your creative ability.

Communication Skills: Reading improves your vocabulary and develops your communication skills. It helps you learn how to use your language creatively. Not only does it improve your communication but it also makes you a better writer. Good communication is important in every aspect of life.

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Increases Knowledge: Books enable you to have a glimpse into cultures, traditions, arts, history, geography, health, psychology and several other subjects and aspects of life. You get an amazing amount of knowledge and information from books.

Reduces Stress: Reading a good book takes you in a new world and helps you relieve your day to day stress. It has several positive effects on your mind, body, and soul. It stimulates your brain muscles and keeps your brain healthy and strong.

Great Pleasure: When I read a book, I read it for pleasure. I just indulge myself in reading and experience a whole new world. Once I start reading a book I get so captivated I never want to leave it until I finish. It always gives a lot of pleasure to read a good book and cherish it for a lifetime.

Boosts your Imagination and Creativity: Reading takes you to the world of imagination and enhances your creativity. Reading helps you explore life from different perspectives. While you read books you are building new and creative thoughts, images and opinions in your mind. It makes you think creatively, fantasize and use your imagination.

Develops your Analytical Skills: By active reading, you explore several aspects of life. It involves questioning what you read. It helps you develop your thoughts and express your opinions. New ideas and thoughts pop up in your mind by active reading. It stimulates and develops your brain and gives you a new perspective.

Reduces Boredom: Journeys for long hours or a long vacation from work can be pretty boring in spite of all the social sites. Books come in handy and release you from boredom.

Read Different Stages of Reading here.

The habit of reading is one of the best qualities that a person can possess. Books are known to be your best friend for a reason. So it is very important to develop a good reading habit. We must all read on a daily basis for at least 30 minutes to enjoy the sweet fruits of reading. It is a great pleasure to sit in a quiet place and enjoy reading. Reading a good book is the most enjoyable experience one can have.

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Writing About Personal Experiences

Table of contents, introduction, what does it mean to write about personal experiences, what does it involve to write about your personal experiences, structure of an essay about your personal experiences, the process of writing about personal experiences, 1. preparation:.

b. Selecting a Personal Experience:

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The Big List of Essay Topics for High School (120+ Ideas!)

Ideas to inspire every young writer!

High school students generally do a lot of writing, learning to use language clearly, concisely, and persuasively. When it’s time to choose an essay topic, though, it’s easy to come up blank. If that’s the case, check out this huge round-up of essay topics for high school. You’ll find choices for every subject and writing style.

• Argumentative Essay Topics
• Cause-and-Effect Essay Topics
• Compare-Contrast Essay Topics
• Descriptive Essay Topics
• Expository and Informative Essay Topics
• Humorous Essay Topics

Literary Essay Topics

• Narrative and Personal Essay Topics
• Personal Essay Topics
• Persuasive Essay Topics

Research Essay Topics

Argumentative essay topics for high school.

When writing an argumentative essay, remember to do the research and lay out the facts clearly. Your goal is not necessarily to persuade someone to agree with you, but to encourage your reader to accept your point of view as valid. Here are some possible argumentative topics to try. ( Here are 100 more compelling argumentative essay topics. )

• The most important challenge our country is currently facing is … (e.g., immigration, gun control, economy)
• The government should provide free internet access for every citizen.
• All drugs should be legalized, regulated, and taxed.
• Vaping is less harmful than smoking tobacco.
• The best country in the world is …
• Parents should be punished for their minor children’s crimes.
• Should all students have the ability to attend college for free?
• Should physical education be part of the standard high school curriculum?

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• Schools should require recommended vaccines for all students, with very limited exceptions.
• Is it acceptable to use animals for experiments and research?
• Does social media do more harm than good?
• Capital punishment does/does not deter crime.
• What one class should all high schools students be required to take and pass in order to graduate?
• Do we really learn anything from history, or does it just repeat itself over and over?
• Are men and women treated equally?

Cause-and-Effect Essay Topics for High School

A cause-and-effect essay is a type of argumentative essay. Your goal is to show how one specific thing directly influences another specific thing. You’ll likely need to do some research to make your point. Here are some ideas for cause-and-effect essays. ( Get a big list of 100 cause-and-effect essay topics here. )

• Humans are causing accelerated climate change.
• Fast-food restaurants have made human health worse over the decades.
• What caused World War II? (Choose any conflict for this one.)
• Describe the effects social media has on young adults.

• How does playing sports affect people?
• What are the effects of loving to read?
• Being an only/oldest/youngest/middle child makes you …
• What effect does violence in movies or video games have on kids?
• Traveling to new places opens people’s minds to new ideas.
• Racism is caused by …

Compare-Contrast Essay Topics for High School

As the name indicates, in compare-and-contrast essays, writers show the similarities and differences between two things. They combine descriptive writing with analysis, making connections and showing dissimilarities. The following ideas work well for compare-contrast essays. ( Find 80+ compare-contrast essay topics for all ages here. )

• Public and private schools
• Capitalism vs. communism
• Monarchy or democracy
• Dogs vs. cats as pets

• Paper books or e-books
• Two political candidates in a current race
• Going to college vs. starting work full-time
• Working your way through college as you go or taking out student loans
• iPhone or Android
• Instagram vs. Twitter (or choose any other two social media platforms)

Descriptive Essay Topics for High School

Bring on the adjectives! Descriptive writing is all about creating a rich picture for the reader. Take readers on a journey to far-off places, help them understand an experience, or introduce them to a new person. Remember: Show, don’t tell. These topics make excellent descriptive essays.

• Who is the funniest person you know?
• What is your happiest memory?
• Tell about the most inspirational person in your life.
• Write about your favorite place.
• When you were little, what was your favorite thing to do?
• Choose a piece of art or music and explain how it makes you feel.
• What is your earliest memory?

• What’s the best/worst vacation you’ve ever taken?
• Describe your favorite pet.
• What is the most important item in the world to you?
• Give a tour of your bedroom (or another favorite room in your home).
• Describe yourself to someone who has never met you.
• Lay out your perfect day from start to finish.
• Explain what it’s like to move to a new town or start a new school.
• Tell what it would be like to live on the moon.

Expository and Informative Essay Topics for High School

Expository essays set out clear explanations of a particular topic. You might be defining a word or phrase or explaining how something works. Expository or informative essays are based on facts, and while you might explore different points of view, you won’t necessarily say which one is “better” or “right.” Remember: Expository essays educate the reader. Here are some expository and informative essay topics to explore. ( See 70+ expository and informative essay topics here. )

• What makes a good leader?
• Explain why a given school subject (math, history, science, etc.) is important for students to learn.
• What is the “glass ceiling” and how does it affect society?
• Describe how the internet changed the world.
• What does it mean to be a good teacher?

• Explain how we could colonize the moon or another planet.
• Discuss why mental health is just as important as physical health.
• Describe a healthy lifestyle for a teenager.
• Choose an American president and explain how their time in office affected the country.
• What does “financial responsibility” mean?

Humorous Essay Topics for High School

Humorous essays can take on any form, like narrative, persuasive, or expository. You might employ sarcasm or satire, or simply tell a story about a funny person or event. Even though these essay topics are lighthearted, they still take some skill to tackle well. Give these ideas a try.

• What would happen if cats (or any other animal) ruled the world?
• What do newborn babies wish their parents knew?
• Explain the best ways to be annoying on social media.
• Invent a wacky new sport, explain the rules, and describe a game or match.

• Imagine a discussion between two historic figures from very different times, like Cleopatra and Queen Elizabeth I.
• Retell a familiar story in tweets or other social media posts.
• Describe present-day Earth from an alien’s point of view.
• Choose a fictional character and explain why they should be the next president.
• Describe a day when kids are in charge of everything, at school and at home.

Literary essays analyze a piece of writing, like a book or a play. In high school, students usually write literary essays about the works they study in class. These literary essay topic ideas focus on books students often read in high school, but many of them can be tweaked to fit other works as well.

• Discuss the portrayal of women in Shakespeare’s Othello .
• Explore the symbolism used in The Scarlet Letter .
• Explain the importance of dreams in Of Mice and Men .
• Compare and contrast the romantic relationships in Pride and Prejudice .

• Dissect the allegory of Animal Farm and its relation to contemporary events.
• Interpret the author’s take on society and class structure in The Great Gatsby .
• Explore the relationship between Hamlet and Ophelia.
• Discuss whether Shakespeare’s portrayal of young love in Romeo and Juliet is accurate.
• Explain the imagery used in Beowulf .

Narrative and Personal Essay Topics for High School

Think of a narrative essay like telling a story. Use some of the same techniques that you would for a descriptive essay, but be sure you have a beginning, middle, and end. A narrative essay doesn’t necessarily need to be personal, but they often are. Take inspiration from these narrative and personal essay topics.

• Describe a performance or sporting event you took part in.
• Explain the process of cooking and eating your favorite meal.
• Write about meeting your best friend for the first time and how your relationship developed.
• Tell about learning to ride a bike or drive a car.
• Describe a time in your life when you’ve been scared.

• Share the most embarrassing thing that ever happened to you.
• Tell about a time when you overcame a big challenge.
• Tell the story of how you learned an important life lesson.
• Describe a time when you or someone you know experienced prejudice or oppression.
• Explain a family tradition, how it developed, and its importance today.
• What is your favorite holiday? How does your family celebrate it?
• Retell a familiar story from the point of view of a different character.
• Describe a time when you had to make a difficult decision.
• Tell about your proudest moment.

Persuasive Essay Topics for High School

Persuasive essays are similar to argumentative , but they rely less on facts and more on emotion to sway the reader. It’s important to know your audience, so you can anticipate any counterarguments they might make and try to overcome them. Try these topics to persuade someone to come around to your point of view. ( Discover 60 more intriguing persuasive essay topics here. )

• Do you think homework should be required, optional, or not given at all?
• Everyone should be vegetarian or vegan.
• What animal makes the best pet?
• Visit an animal shelter, choose an animal that needs a home, and write an essay persuading someone to adopt that animal.
• Who is the world’s best athlete, present or past?
• Should little kids be allowed to play competitive sports?
• Are professional athletes/musicians/actors overpaid?
• The best music genre is …

• Is democracy the best form of government?
• Is capitalism the best form of economy?
• Students should/should not be able to use their phones during the school day.
• Should schools have dress codes?
• If I could change one school rule, it would be …
• Is year-round school a good idea?

A research essay is a classic high school assignment. These papers require deep research into primary source documents, with lots of supporting facts and evidence that’s properly cited. Research essays can be in any of the styles shown above. Here are some possible topics, across a variety of subjects.

• Which country’s style of government is best for the people who live there?
• Choose a country and analyze its development from founding to present day.
• Describe the causes and effects of a specific war.
• Formulate an ideal economic plan for our country.
• What scientific discovery has had the biggest impact on life today?

• Analyze the way mental health is viewed and treated in this country.
• Explore the ways systemic racism impacts people in all walks of life.
• Defend the importance of teaching music and the arts in public schools.
• Choose one animal from the endangered species list, and propose a realistic plan to protect it.

What are some of your favorite essay topics for high school? Come share your prompts on the WeAreTeachers HELPLINE group on Facebook .

Plus, check out the ultimate guide to student writing contests .

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Optional key stage 1 tests: 2024 English reading test materials

Optional English reading test materials used in May 2024.

2024 key stage 1 English reading Paper 1: reading prompt and answer booklet

Ref: ISBN 978-1-83507-015-4, STA/24/8800/e

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2024 key stage 1 English reading Paper 2: reading booklet

Ref: ISBN 978-1-83507-017-8, STA/24/8802/e

PDF , 7.17 MB , 12 pages

2024 key stage 1 English reading Paper 2: reading answer booklet

Ref: ISBN 978-1-83507-016-1, STA/24/8801/e

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2024 key stage 1 English reading - administering Paper 1: reading prompt and answer booklet

Ref: ISBN 978-1-83507-136-6, STA/24/8821/e

PDF , 243 KB , 8 pages

2024 key stage 1 English reading - administering Paper 2: reading booklet and reading answer booklet

Ref: ISBN 978-1-83507-137-3, STA/24/8822/e

PDF , 208 KB , 4 pages

2024 key stage 1 English reading mark schemes

Ref: ISBN 978-1-83507-018-5, STA/24/8803/e

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2024 copyright ownership: key stage 1 national curriculum tests

It is recommended that schools administer the optional English reading tests at the end of key stage 1 in May 2024. Test administration instructions and mark schemes are also provided.

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Opinion Guest Essay

Should Trump Be Sentenced to Prison? Two Opposing Views.

Credit... Damon Winter/The New York Times

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By New York Times Opinion

• June 2, 2024

Now that Donald Trump has been convicted on 34 felony counts, his sentencing hearing looms on July 11. Below are two legal experts weighing in on the critical question of whether Mr. Trump ought to receive a prison sentence.

The Case for Prison Time for Trump

By Norman Eisen

Having witnessed every day of Donald Trump’s criminal trial for falsifying business records to conceal a sex scandal that threatened his presidential campaign, I strongly believe the former president should be sentenced to incarceration.

I am a lawyer, not a judge, but I have practiced criminal law for over three decades. Under New York law, sentencing should be based on the gravity of the crime — and the 34 offenses on which Mr. Trump has now been convicted are profoundly serious. To find him guilty of felony business record falsification, the jury had to determine that he intended to commit, aid or conceal a second crime by making or causing false entries.

Jurors were given only one option for that second offense. That was the payment of hush money to hide damaging information, “a criminal scheme to corrupt the 2016 presidential election” under New York’s criminal code. Joshua Steinglass, one of the prosecutors, underscored the significance of that in his closing argument, telling jurors, “Democracy gives people the right to elect their leaders, but that rests on the premise that the voters have access to accurate information about the candidates.” Mr. Trump sought “to deny that access, to manipulate and defraud the voters, to pull the wool over their eyes in a coordinated fashion,” Mr. Steinglass said.

Because the legitimacy of our entire system of government rests on free and fair elections, this offense is deserving of punishment.

Sentences should take into account outcomes in comparable cases. When Justice Juan Merchan sentences Mr. Trump, he will do so against a backdrop of many other defendants who have been convicted of this felony. My research for a book about the case, “Trying Trump: A Guide to His First Election Interference Criminal Trial,” included examining almost 10,000 prosecutions for falsifying business records in New York since 2015. In the most serious of these cases, about 10 percent of the total, incarceration was imposed. Mr. Trump’s assault on our democracy is as serious as or more serious than any of those others. My research also showed that first-time offenders like Mr. Trump are not exempt from sentences of incarceration, nor should they be if, like the former president, their offense is serious enough.

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COVID-19: Long-term effects

Some people continue to experience health problems long after having COVID-19. Understand the possible symptoms and risk factors for post-COVID-19 syndrome.

Most people who get coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) recover within a few weeks. But some people — even those who had mild versions of the disease — might have symptoms that last a long time afterward. These ongoing health problems are sometimes called post- COVID-19 syndrome, post- COVID conditions, long COVID-19 , long-haul COVID-19 , and post acute sequelae of SARS COV-2 infection (PASC).

What is post-COVID-19 syndrome and how common is it?

Post- COVID-19 syndrome involves a variety of new, returning or ongoing symptoms that people experience more than four weeks after getting COVID-19 . In some people, post- COVID-19 syndrome lasts months or years or causes disability.

Research suggests that between one month and one year after having COVID-19 , 1 in 5 people ages 18 to 64 has at least one medical condition that might be due to COVID-19 . Among people age 65 and older, 1 in 4 has at least one medical condition that might be due to COVID-19 .

What are the symptoms of post-COVID-19 syndrome?

The most commonly reported symptoms of post- COVID-19 syndrome include:

• Symptoms that get worse after physical or mental effort
• Lung (respiratory) symptoms, including difficulty breathing or shortness of breath and cough

Other possible symptoms include:

• Neurological symptoms or mental health conditions, including difficulty thinking or concentrating, headache, sleep problems, dizziness when you stand, pins-and-needles feeling, loss of smell or taste, and depression or anxiety
• Joint or muscle pain
• Heart symptoms or conditions, including chest pain and fast or pounding heartbeat
• Digestive symptoms, including diarrhea and stomach pain
• Blood clots and blood vessel (vascular) issues, including a blood clot that travels to the lungs from deep veins in the legs and blocks blood flow to the lungs (pulmonary embolism)
• Other symptoms, such as a rash and changes in the menstrual cycle

Keep in mind that it can be hard to tell if you are having symptoms due to COVID-19 or another cause, such as a preexisting medical condition.

It's also not clear if post- COVID-19 syndrome is new and unique to COVID-19 . Some symptoms are similar to those caused by chronic fatigue syndrome and other chronic illnesses that develop after infections. Chronic fatigue syndrome involves extreme fatigue that worsens with physical or mental activity, but doesn't improve with rest.

Why does COVID-19 cause ongoing health problems?

Organ damage could play a role. People who had severe illness with COVID-19 might experience organ damage affecting the heart, kidneys, skin and brain. Inflammation and problems with the immune system can also happen. It isn't clear how long these effects might last. The effects also could lead to the development of new conditions, such as diabetes or a heart or nervous system condition.

The experience of having severe COVID-19 might be another factor. People with severe symptoms of COVID-19 often need to be treated in a hospital intensive care unit. This can result in extreme weakness and post-traumatic stress disorder, a mental health condition triggered by a terrifying event.

What are the risk factors for post-COVID-19 syndrome?

You might be more likely to have post- COVID-19 syndrome if:

• You had severe illness with COVID-19 , especially if you were hospitalized or needed intensive care.
• You had certain medical conditions before getting the COVID-19 virus.
• You had a condition affecting your organs and tissues (multisystem inflammatory syndrome) while sick with COVID-19 or afterward.

Post- COVID-19 syndrome also appears to be more common in adults than in children and teens. However, anyone who gets COVID-19 can have long-term effects, including people with no symptoms or mild illness with COVID-19 .

What should you do if you have post-COVID-19 syndrome symptoms?

If you're having symptoms of post- COVID-19 syndrome, talk to your health care provider. To prepare for your appointment, write down:

• When your symptoms started
• What makes your symptoms worse
• How often you experience symptoms
• How your symptoms affect your activities

Your health care provider might do lab tests, such as a complete blood count or liver function test. You might have other tests or procedures, such as chest X-rays, based on your symptoms. The information you provide and any test results will help your health care provider come up with a treatment plan.

In addition, you might benefit from connecting with others in a support group and sharing resources.

• Long COVID or post-COVID conditions. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/long-term-effects.html. Accessed May 6, 2022.
• Post-COVID conditions: Overview for healthcare providers. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/clinical-care/post-covid-conditions.html. Accessed May 6, 2022.
• Mikkelsen ME, et al. COVID-19: Evaluation and management of adults following acute viral illness. https://www.uptodate.com/contents/search. Accessed May 6, 2022.
• Saeed S, et al. Coronavirus disease 2019 and cardiovascular complications: Focused clinical review. Journal of Hypertension. 2021; doi:10.1097/HJH.0000000000002819.
• AskMayoExpert. Post-COVID-19 syndrome. Mayo Clinic; 2022.
• Multisystem inflammatory syndrome (MIS). Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/mis/index.html. Accessed May 24, 2022.
• Patient tips: Healthcare provider appointments for post-COVID conditions. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/long-term-effects/post-covid-appointment/index.html. Accessed May 24, 2022.
• Bull-Otterson L, et al. Post-COVID conditions among adult COVID-19 survivors aged 18-64 and ≥ 65 years — United States, March 2020 — November 2021. MMWR Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. 2022; doi:10.15585/mmwr.mm7121e1.

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