Just like learning to walk or ride a bike, learning to read is one of life’s milestones. However, unlike walking and biking, reading skills are not suddenly obtained and then static throughout life. After learning to read initially, an individual’s reading skills, interests, and purposes further develop and change throughout their life. Furthermore, the means by which an individual improves their reading capabilities change over time as well. In the same way, I initially improved my reading ability and changed my interests through the help of my parents, then later my teachers, and finally, in spite of a dark period of little improvement, through my own effort. As a baby, and later as a toddler, my parents made a point to begin my education
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In sixth grade, my literature teacher was very assertive and arrogant. This alone gave me a bad impression of the class which spread into my reading education. It was also the first experience I had of keeping a log of my reading, which has been the bane of my existance since I was first introduced to it. Additionally, the teacher recommended to me a number of books that I hated. All of these problems compounded to decrease my reading time. In seventh grade, my reading experience went farther downhill. The teacher expected us to do projects reflecting over what we had read every time we finished a book, with a minimum of five per trimester. I hated doing these reflection projects, so my quantity of reading fell further to just five books every three months. However, the final nail in the coffin of my reading came in eighth grade. On the first day of school, the teacher informed us that the only genre we would be allowed to read for out reading logs, which were unnecessarily complicated, was nonfiction. Up until the point, I had rarely so much as laid hands on a nonfiction book. I stopped reading nearly outright. Because we had to do a large amount of reflection and analysis for every weekly reading log, including a one page essay, I would only skim through the text enough to become informed enough to write a passable essay. The way my education in reading was progressing, I concluded …show more content…
There were no reading logs and no reflection projects. The only expectation was that the students would read the occasional assigned book, such as Romeo and Juliet or The Odyssey. However, these books were assigned intermittently enough to make the frustration I suffered from their restriction negligible. This newfound freedom led me to discover my new favorite genres of writing, which were, and still are, science fiction and dystopian novels. My initial experience with science fiction was H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine. It’s exciting plot and meaningful themes led me to see reading in a whole new light. I realized that fiction is not only useful for entertainment, but also for learning about the world. With this revolutionary state of mind, I sought out books such as Lord of the Flies and 1984. Just last year, I read Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, which once again proved to me that novels are nearly as useful for learning about the world and developing one’s character as nonfiction books. With this new perspective in mind, I am excited to discover more books to once again captivate me and consume my
In sixth grade, my literature teacher was very assertive and arrogant. This alone gave me a bad impression of the class which spread into my reading education. It was also the first experience I had of keeping a log of my reading, which has been the bane of my existance since I was first introduced to it. Additionally, the teacher recommended to me a number of books that I hated. All of these problems compounded to decrease my reading time. In seventh grade, my reading experience went farther downhill. The teacher expected us to do projects reflecting over what we had read every time we finished a book, with a minimum of five per trimester. I hated doing these reflection projects, so my quantity of reading fell further to just five books every three months. However, the final nail in the coffin of my reading came in eighth grade. On the first day of school, the teacher informed us that the only genre we would be allowed to read for out reading logs, which were unnecessarily complicated, was nonfiction. Up until the point, I had rarely so much as laid hands on a nonfiction book. I stopped reading nearly outright. Because we had to do a large amount of reflection and analysis for every weekly reading log, including a one page essay, I would only skim through the text enough to become informed enough to write a passable essay. The way my education in reading was progressing, I concluded …show more content…
There were no reading logs and no reflection projects. The only expectation was that the students would read the occasional assigned book, such as Romeo and Juliet or The Odyssey. However, these books were assigned intermittently enough to make the frustration I suffered from their restriction negligible. This newfound freedom led me to discover my new favorite genres of writing, which were, and still are, science fiction and dystopian novels. My initial experience with science fiction was H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine. It’s exciting plot and meaningful themes led me to see reading in a whole new light. I realized that fiction is not only useful for entertainment, but also for learning about the world. With this revolutionary state of mind, I sought out books such as Lord of the Flies and 1984. Just last year, I read Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, which once again proved to me that novels are nearly as useful for learning about the world and developing one’s character as nonfiction books. With this new perspective in mind, I am excited to discover more books to once again captivate me and consume my