Reading And Reading : My Experience Of Reading

My relationship with literature has changed dramatically over the course of my life. I found my love of reading early on, and somehow, I also lost my love of reading pretty early. Reading as a child was my escape, running away from my problems without actually going anywhere. I could get away from the world around me and be transported into these amazing and beautiful stories full of wonderful things. Then once reading became something I was forced to do it no longer felt wonderful. It felt like a chore that I really didn’t want to participate in. Losing that choice to read or not to read really is what my downfall was.

My relationship with reading has always been ambiguous. Many people would try to help improve my love of reading, my mother, my father, my oldest sister, whom at the time strived to be an elementary school teacher, everyone was always telling me to read more. We would even have special weeks where a group of young military men and women would come to read at my elementary school, but I was more interested in learning about their duties than what they were reading to me. I felt rude about it, but it was just how I was. My mother used to read to me quite often, she would sit me and my sister, Madison, down to read us a book each night. She would let us choose the book, even though I always chose Scooby-Doo, and Madison would choose something more along the lines of Where the

First, in kindergarten, I began to learn the alphabet. Once I understood how to pronounce each letter of the alphabet, a first grader would come to my classroom and read to me. They would help me pronounce a word and explain what each word meant in the book we were reading that day. This was very helpful because it allowed me to learn faster than if I was reading on my own. The day I started first grade, I went to the library and picked out two books. The books I mostly read were Clifford or Dr. Seuss. My teacher would have me read them over and over again until I understood each word. Once I accomplished reading each book, I was sent to the kindergarten classrooms to read to them like it was once done for me in the past. I was a little nervous to read in front of them, but I was also excited

Everyone around me was silently sitting, staring down at their laps. Me, on the other hand, would just sit there and stare at a wall, while humming to myself. I never understood why all of my classmates enjoyed reading books. Correction; I actually just did not understand what was wrong with me, and why I did not enjoy reading like all of the other kids did. Reading never sparked my interest due to many reasons, including; being distracted, being laughed at, and the books I was forced to read.

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.

Before I began elementary school, I enjoyed reading picture books, the touch and feel books and pop-up books. I loved the author Dr. Suess, because he was funny and because I loved the rhyming he did in his writing. I can remember before bed, my mom or dad would read to me until I got old enough to read myself. My mom has always enjoyed reading, if she is not reading a book, then she is reading a recipe or a magazine. My dad on the other hand, I have only seen him read one book, besides reading manuals for his tools. Reading was not a big deal in my house, all of us kids were told that we needed to read, but they did not force us to read. This brings me to Richard Rodriguez’s essay, in his household reading was not as important, but once he got to school, he realized that reading is one of the main activities. I can relate to Rodriguez because in either one of our households we weren’t told that we had to read before we did something else. Once I got to elementary school is when I realized that reading was not for me. Before school, I enjoyed reading, then once I began elementary school, I was forced to read, take tests over books, and read out loud in front of the class which made reading a chore.

I didn't learn how to read until the third grade. One day i picked up a book with beautiful pictures and i so badly wanted to understand what it said. And so I did. It just clicked in my head all of a sudden and I was able to understand. Before too long I was reading everything in the school library. I would get lost in the different worlds and I learned the meaning of words I didn't know by reading the sentence/ paragraph it was in. Finally i felt like I had something that I was good at. I could outread my peers before too long and by the time I was 9 years old I was reading college level books with ease. I would be spending at least 4 hours a day just reading, finishing 400 page book in a matter of days. In reading I was able to gain confidence in myself at school, and when things got hard I could just slip into another story and forget about my

Ever since I was in elementary school, I was never able to grasp what I was reading. It was always a chore and I would speed through it or avoid it entirely. The extra help I received was meant to help me provoke, my eventual, love for reading, but at the time only made me feel as though I wasn't smart enough to read what everyone else my age could. While most kids would push themselves to read books like Harry Potter, I was the kid who was still reading the Magic Treehouse series. It was through the assistance of my parents encouraging me to read 30 minutes every night that caused me to love reading and become the reader I am today.

: When I was in preschool which was when I was about 4 or 5 years old, I saw all of the teachers reading and I wanted to learn for myself how to read. I went home and I asked my mom "Can you help me learn how to read please." So my mom and I began the slow and steady practice of reading. I was persistent to learning how to read at a young age because I felt like it was something no other kid my age would want to do at that age. I started with simple books for about 8 months

When I was little, I would enjoy reading books such as, Henry and Mudge, and also Captain Underpants. These were some books that I was able to understand because of them being less rigorous. As a grade school student, I was never the strongest reader. It was hard for me to understand and comprehend the material I was learning. In class, we would read short chapter books together as a class and take brief quizzes on the chapter then after. I believe the turning point to becoming a substantial reader happened when my family and I moved. I attended a different school in a different school district going entering fourth grade. Switching schools I think has benefitted me, and I think it was good I was still little because I felt as if the new school district I was in, District 303 in Illinois, give students more assistance and one-on-one to help us become stronger readers. When my class would start reading in class, I would step out of class and meet a

Reading has had a place in my life from a young age with two young working parents putting themselves through school, books often kept me busy and quiet. When I started elementary school it took me longer to develop my reading skills if it wasn’t for my favorite book series Amelia Beldia I don’t think I ever would have caught up. The moment I fell in love with reading I was in second grade on a school night I stayed up all night reading a long book about animals. I even woke up my parents at 4 am to tell them how proud I was of myself. Reading in a classroom setting is difficult for me when I'm not interested in the story. The proficiency tests throughout the years k-5th where the worst. Terrible short stories about potato farming, bird flight patterns were not interesting enough to keep my hyperactive mind on track. Against all odds, I was able to focus and graduate

Growing up with a mother who worked first shift, a father who worked third shift, and a brother nine months older than me, I had literally no one to teach me how to read. I would sit in the middle of the living room floor and hold a book upside down and pretend to read. I had no idea what was actually on the page but from the picture I was pretty spot on. I would read anything with pictures on it. My first reading encounter did not start off in an academic setting.

Some of my earliest memories about reading are when I was in Kindergarten my mom and I would read Dr. Seuss picture books before bedtime. My favorite one was the “One Fish Two Fish” and I always wanted to read it. Later on we stopped reading books and I fell behind on the reading curve for school. I began to dislike reading and I only did it when I had to, I never read on my own. No matter what my mom did to try and get me to read more it never worked

My personal history as a reader started when I was in kindergarten. There were two people who helped me learn to read, which were my mother and my kindergarten teacher. They helped me learn to read by first knowing Basic English words. My best experience while reading was understanding different perspectives and feeling what the character is feeling through the authors’ descriptive writing. When I read any stories I like to put myself in the characters perspective to experience the book better. I never had a worst experience reading except when I was little and it was hard for me to pronounce certain words.

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