My personal literacy development has been a constant struggle since I arrived in America as a boy with a Spanish-speaking mother and a bilingual father. At home we spoke Spanish. When I started school I could only speak a small amount of English and understood only slightly more. I learned, as young children do, by listening to the people around me and using whatever visual aids I could to fill in the gaps in my understanding (Winch, Johnston, March, Ljungdahl, Holliday, 2012). My lack of basic literacy affected every area of ​​my learning, with only math lessons allowing me to feel somewhat comfortable due to the international nature of numerical literacy. I quickly developed the speaking skills necessary to be able to contribute in social and academic situations, but unfortunately I developed other ways to hide my lack of progress in other areas. My reading and writing skills were still very poor when I left primary school, I had missed out on many of the fundamentals of these skills and they were never addressed again in my subsequent school life. I used many shortcuts such as audiobooks and shortened texts to reduce the amount of reading I had to do during my time in high school. My reading skills remained at the same level for many years and it took a wonderful author and a 28 hour flight to make up for it. Since that day my vocabulary and understanding have improved immeasurably and I now love to read and do lots of other reading to further develop my literacy. In the area of ​​written literacy my main difficulties concern punctuation and grammar. It's only now, in the last year, that I've taken the time and had the motivation to improve my writing. After completing a unit entitled Thinking and Writing at Universes...... middle of paper ...... unit, the remainder of this course and beyond I will be expected to use my personal experiences in developing literacy and continue to develop my skills. This will be critical to providing my future students with the literacy foundation they deserve. Works Cited ACARA. (2012). The Australian Curriculum v3.0. Retrieved March 22, 2011, from The Australian Curriculum: http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/GeneralCapabilities/Literacy/Introduction/IntroductionLindsfors, J.D. (1991). Children's language and learning (2nd ed.). Needham, MA: Pearson Education.O'Neill, S., Gish, A. (2008). Teaching English as a second language. South Melbourne, VIC: Oxford University Press.Winch, G., Johnston, R., March, P., Ljungdahl, L., & Holliday, M. (2010). Literacy: Reading, writing, and children's literature (4th ed.). South Melbourne, VIC: Oxford University Press.