Each child’s reading experience is different than others. Some kids may accelerate as readers being able to pronounce large words, understand the plot of a story and enjoy reading, while others have a more difficult time doing this. As a young child the way I learned to read greatly affected my reading habits when I was older. As I grew older, I did not enjoy reading on my own and I had difficulty analyzing works of literature in school because of negative thoughts connected to previous experiences as a child.
As a child I had a speech impediment, so whenever I was called on to read in class I was made fun of. Eventually, in 3rd grade, I was put into speech therapy lessons to help with my speech impediment. My speech therapy teacher was always encouraging of me to read and practice pronouncing my words correctly. She introduced me to small fictional novels by reading small excerpts from the books and having me read them back to her. A majority of the books she read to me were Charles Dickens books.
My Interests In these books played a key role In the correction f my speech Impediment, and even contributed to me galling Interest In reading fiction books. After my speech impediment lessons I lost my interest in reading completely. Without motivation or purpose behind reading I found it not to be enjoyable. Up until my 6th grade year in middle school I had not read book independently for years. In my English class I was struggling; my lack of reading from previous years caused my vocabulary to have a very small range of words and my ability to take In Information from works of literature and process It was at a minimum.
I remember my class was reading “Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl”, and my frustration of not understanding what some of the words were and now knowing what was going on caused me to lose interest in the book completely. My grades were suffering because of my previous reading habits. Before the beginning of my 7th grade year of school, I moved in with my dad. He was always at work, so I was always trying to preoccupy myself with things to do. One day I found myself in the local library wondering around in the fiction section looking at kooks.
One book in particular caught my attention. I skimmed through the book at first, and five minutes later I found myself on the floor already reading deep Into the book. I could not get a library card so I never once checked out a book, but Instead I sat on the floor everyday and read as much as I could (of whichever book I was reading) before I had to leave. The more I read, the more I found myself enjoying It. After my 7th grade year in middle school, I began to read independently and actually and I have read every single book I own.
I would have to say that this particular experience in my life changed the way I looked at reading. As a young child my experiences with reading did not lead me to enjoy reading as I got older. I have grown so much as a reader because of the way I learned to read and comprehend literature. These experiences do slightly affect me still; they are not quite as bad as they were when I was a bit younger. However, my experiences from when I was younger have definitely influenced my favorite genre of literature, and the way I enjoy reading today. These experiences make me the avid reader I am.
