Personal Narrative: My Reading Journey

So everyday I would beg my mom and sister to help me with my reading. My mom would always help me whenever I asked, but my sister was a little bit harder to convince. Usually she would help me though. Once I began learning how to read, I realized how much fun it was. It was all I ever wanted to do. Whenever I was bored, I would just sit down and write out all the words that I could. But I would soon learn those words and go look through books to find new ones to learn. I quickly caught on and I was able to read simple books very well. I would practice whenever I could. When I was in the car I would read all the street signs and names of buildings that we passed by. Reading became my go to whenever I was bored, sad, angry, or just wanted to have a little

For some people reading can be a difficult experience. For me it became difficult at the age of five years old. I really wasn’t an educational kid I was more of a kid that like to play with my toys and four brothers, whenever they came home from school. As I grew up reading became a little more difficult for me to master, at times in my middle school my teacher Mr.G would test us on how well and skilled we were at reading. Every day when it was time for him to test me I would get nervous and started to stubble on words and fail my test. By the time I was in high school I learned how to take my time and read, which has help me to progress my reading skills over the years.

For average kids who lead an average life, usually learn how to read in kindergarten or first grade. However, my story is a little below average. Like every other kid in my class, I was read to by my parents, but not explicitly on how to read. Entering kindergarten early with a lesser developed brain, already put me in a rough spot. And with a string of incompetent teachers, I never learned how to truly immerse myself into a book until third grade. My poor education leads me to have inferiority issues in my future and constantly believe that I will never be good enough.

This semester we have done many activities/sessions that have really helped me grow as a reader, writer, and as a learner in general. We have done everything from writing a literary essay, to learning how to write with argumentative purposes.

Learning to read was a struggle for me. My father never had the opportunity to attend school of any kind, being born in the early 1940’s and with several siblings; he went to work at about the age of eight. My mother made it to junior high before have to leave school to start working. This factored into my early struggle with reading. My parents were unable to help me with reading and spelling. I was not that little girl that got bedtime stories read to her, and there were few books around the house, even with my parents’, especially my mother realizing how important an education would be for me. My mother intended for me to not have to work as hard as she and my father did. I was also fortunate that the school I attended talked to my parents about special education for the learning disability that I was diagnosed with. Through special education, I received quality one on one instruction.

I love to write. It’s actually where I feel most creative. However, I don’t love to write. It is my belief that composing documents by typing them is unquestionably easier and more efficient. When one physically writes, they typically tire easily. For me, it’s usually at five sentences or so when my hand starts to cramp up. At that point, I begin to compromise in my writing, trying to get to my point as quickly as possible, so that I can just get it over with. I also find that I’m a planner when writing. I can have a whole paragraph mapped out in my head before even starting it. However, when I have to slowly and painstakingly compose with a pen or pencil, I lose many of the ideas I had going into it, and again, just want to get it over with.

I never realized that there was a specific name for what people do when they read. I know that if they are good readers, they may stop and ask themselves questions every once in a while, and make predictions, but I didn’t know what all of that was called. There are multiple things that people may do before they read, while they read, and after they read, and that is called the Strategic Reading Process. As I read through some of the examples that people do, I noticed that I do a lot of the same things, and I don’t even realize that I’m doing it. I think that I have practiced those strategies so many times that I don’t even have to tell myself to do it anymore because I’m a much better reader now than I was when I first started to read.

The summer following my senior year in high school, I was called to serve in the, “Virginia Richmond Mission,” for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. It was anticipated that I would serve for a period of eighteen months. This was a voluntary decision: one that would require I leave my home, family, and loved ones behind to focus all my time and efforts on serving others and sharing the good word of God. I knew that this experience would have a huge impact on my life and help me to build my character.

Before I could even read, I would take the newspaper and sit next to my uncle, pretending to read as he scanned each page. While I pretended to read, I thought about how all the letters represented something. How is it possible to read from paper and conceive a sentence? Every time I noticed my family reading the newspaper or a book, I envied them because they understood every word and I didn't. I recognized their reading as a secret club that I wasn’t invited to attend. Later on during my childhood, I start reading and just like every kid I didn’t want to read. I felt like a failure when reading, because I couldn’t pronounce words or even finish sentences correctly. My 2nd grade teacher called my mom to inform her of my lack of reading in class and recommended that I read every night. Just like any other caring mom, she started buying books for me to read. As I got used to the routine of reading a book a

Eventually, she believed that I had developed enough as a reader to try my hand at reading one on my own. Nothing scared me more than the prospect of failing in front of her; however, I forged ahead and read what was in front of me. At first, I failed. Stumbling over words and misreading entire sentences, I was a complete mess during my time reading, but somehow my mother continued to smile and credited me for reading well. Despite how horrible I knew I had been, my mother’s support reassured me to try again with the next

Just because my parents were teachers, didn’t mean I could magically read. No, I still had to work for it just like everyone else. Knowing the letters came first, that way we could put them together and make words. I always remember going over flashcards for the 36 words we had to know that year. My mom had taught kindergarten all day long, and my dad took pity on her. He was the one who helped me learn those words at home. Everything would be going fine until we got the word “much”. I could recognize the word just fine, but pronouncing it was a different story. I would tell my dad that “that word was munch”. For a while he found it pretty amusing, but after minutes of working on getting me to release the “n” he got frustrated. I still catch myself saying munch instead of much sometimes. Eventually, I did get to know all of the words and reading on my own became a lot easier. I didn’t have to hypothesize what was happening based upon the images anymore and I was excited to keep reading. I keep on learning the basics, and little by little I improved my literacy skills with help from my teachers and my

All throughout kindergarten and first grade I scraped by with the littlest reading skills. My parents started to notice I was struggling; my mom would read with me all the time but for some reason I could not figure it out. It was time to begin a new school year, and not being able to read well can make it a difficult time for someone my age.

“Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily often helplessly into another’s skin, another voice, another soul,” wrote Joyce Carol Oates.I remember how mesmerized I felt when my mom read to me, especially the sensation I felt as I imagined the soft breeze touching my skin, and the fragrance of its nature overpowering my senses. I love to escape from reality, experiencing the story like I was there. Reading has been a big part of my life, but I have had many obstacles that prevented me from really enjoying the pleasure of reading.

The origin of my reading career took place when I was five years old at a Target in Highland, Indiana. My grandmother always took me to Target and would encourage me to learn to read. She would take me to the literacy section and allowed me to choose five books to look at while she was shopping. After my grandmother finished her shopping, she would allow me to bring home one book each time. When we arrived home my grandmother would sit next to me and read the book I chose to take home. She would say a sentence from the book and have me repeat the sentence that she said. This experience sculpted my interest in reading books, but it caused issues with my comprehension. My grandmother would only teach me how to say the words and form them

My journey of reading and writing has allowed me to be so fluent that I was able to write 2 sermons in the past year. I felt confident enough to do so because of my strong literacy background. Writing a sermon is a lot different than writing a speech for a class. When writing a sermon you have to think about the audience more carefully than you would for school. I think speech writing classes prepare you for moments like that. You have to be more considerate of the emotions and the feelings of the audience you are trying to reach. Another thing to consider when writing a sermon, you have to be aware of what type of audience you are trying to reach. It could be a congregation of young people so you’d have to think in more contemporary terms.