My personal literacy development has been a constant struggle since arriving in America as a boy with a Spanish-speaking mother and a bilingual father. We spoke Spanish at home. When I started school, I only spoke a little English and understood only a little 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 all areas of my learning, with only math classes allowing me to feel somewhat comfortable due to the international nature of digital culture. I quickly developed the oratory skills necessary to be able to contribute in social and academic situations but unfortunately developed other ways to hide my lack of progress in other areas. My reading and writing skills were still very weak when I left primary school, I had lacked many of the foundations of these skills and they were never addressed again in my later school life. I used many shortcuts like audiobooks and abridged texts to reduce the amount of reading I had to do while 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 fix it. My vocabulary and comprehension have improved dramatically since that day and now I enjoy reading and doing lots of additional reading to further develop my literacy. In the area of ​​written literacy, my main difficulties relate to punctuation and grammar. It’s only now, over the last year, that I’ve taken the time and had the motivation to improve my writing. After completing a unit titled Thinking and Writing about the Universe...... middle of article ...... unit, the rest of this course and beyond, I will need to use my personal experiences in literacy development and continue to develop my skills. This will be essential in providing my future students with the literacy foundation they deserve. Works CitedACARA. (2012). The Australian Program v3.0. Retrieved March 22, 2011 from The Australian Curriculum: http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/GeneralCapabilities/Literacy/Introduction/IntroductionLindsfors, J.D. (1991). Language and children's 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. and Holliday, M. (2010). Literacy: reading, writing and children's literature (4th ed.). South Melbourne, Victoria: Oxford University Press.