Essay: Learning to read and write

While learning to read, my parents were an extremely active influence. From an early age, they were consistently reading my sister and I bedtime stories as well as other books throughout the day. I remember when I first began to show interest in reading and my parents actively supported me by purchasing books designed for children learning to read. Because of this support, I entered kindergarten with the ability to read basic sentences and short books independently. By the second grade, I had been introduced to the Harry Potter series, and devoured the first installment within a week. I would often visit the library and check out as many books as I was allowed to, often beginning one on the car ride home and having two or three books open at a time. This early introduction into the world of reading fostered a hunger for books that continued to grow.

 

Learning to write was a much more laborious process than learning to read. My earliest memory of writing is of sitting at the kitchen table with a series of writing tablets and a pencil. My mother sat beside me, instructing me over and over on how the letters should look. Eventually this process would result in my knowledge of the alphabet and writing skills and would earn me a “Great Job!” sticker on most writing assignments given in kindergarten. I was very proud of my writing ability and often wrote short stories until the third grade and learning to write cursive entered the picture, which is made even more humorous by the lack of cursive education in today’s schools. For some reason, I could not create an uppercase “L” that was good enough for my third grade English teacher. She would constantly correct my work, yet I would continue to fail at penning her perfect uppercase “L”. This inability frustrated me tremendously, and I’m sure it frustrated my teacher as well, so much that she gave me my first ever detention. I had to stay inside during recess for two days to practice my cursive “L”. Even after writing that dreaded letter over and over again, I still have to think twice before penning anything in cursive that requires the use of a capitalized “L”. Obviously this experience has stuck with me and continues to influence my classroom management style, as I never want to alienate a student in the same way that my teacher alienated me.

I am much less confident in my current writing abilities then I am my reading abilities. Years of academic papers have turned me against any love of writing that I had as a child. There are times when I proofread my writing multiple times, editing it each time, and it still does not meet the quality that I would like to present to the reader. I often approach paper composition with a high level of trepidation, going through the process of multiple edits and drafts before I feel the paper is where it should be, yet I am never quite satisfied with the final result. I find reading to be much more approachable, most likely the result of never facing much challenge with the skill.

Over the years, my reading ability has improved greatly and while I still read fiction novels during school breaks (often reading a new book every few days), I also find myself reading academic texts for enjoyment, attempting to comprehend the included information to the best of my ability. This comprehension is greatly impacted by my reading process. Before I sit down to read an academic text, I make sure to have a highlighter and pencil in hand. As I read the text, I highlight important information and use the pencil to mark terms or phrases I don’t fully understand. I also take notes in the margins if there is something recalled that impacts the information. After the initial reading, I will research any terms I need more information on, and reread the highlighted portions. This is usually the extent of my reading process for academic papers, unless there is a related article that sparks my interest, while I sit down with a new novel and devour it, no questions asked.

With a relatively easy experience learning to read and a more challenging experience with learning to write, I feel that the improvement of my literacy skills has been average to that of my peers. I was fortunate enough to have parents who stressed the importance of reading and writing well before I was enrolled in school, and this early start set me on the right foot to becoming fairly well-versed in academic studies.