My Literary Experience

As a child, I was exposed to reading at a fairly early age. My older sister Katherine, who is four years older than me, was always reading and doing homework for school. I have always looked up to her and I wanted to be just like her; therefore, I wanted to learn to read also. However, at this time I was only three, but I knew I wanted to start reading at an early age.

Although I possessed sheer determination, I encountered some obstacles when I attempted to read. My parents realized that I had a mild speech problem when I was three, and I began meeting with a speech therapist for a few times a week in preschool. Although some kids despised speech, I personally liked it because I would receive prizes for completing the exercises successfully and for some reason I found that fun. In addition, I really liked my speech therapist, and I had a few friends in my speech class. By completing speech therapy, I was exposed to letters and sounds at an early age which helped me to begin reading. My therapist read to me individually which encouraged me to grow academically as a student. I viewed reading as a game because I loved playing the games in speech therapy and the exercises exposed me to phonics and words.

Every day when I came home from preschool, my mom permitted me to select either an episode of Barney or Reading Rainbow to watch before my nap. For some reason I was a Barney fanatic, and watching the show was the highlight of my day. By watching these shows, I was exposed to various aspects of literacy and the programs encouraged reading in a fun environment. I loved listening to stories, but I loved reading stories on my own even more. After I learned to read, I began to read stories daily. Like everyone else, I read aloud to my mom and dad. When I became confident, I began to pretend I was a teacher and I read to my stuffed animals as I played ‘school.” I thought learning to read was a huge accomplishment and I told everyone I knew about my success. Obviously, I thought I was cool, but my older sister still seemed to think otherwise.

As I started first grade, I was put in the “Red Robin” book group, which was for the “advanced first grader.” We began to read chapter books and I felt extremely important at this point. In the middle of the year, we were assigned a high school buddy to read to us and I thought it was the coolest thing ever. We would read a story together and complete a craft relating to the story. Our buddies visited once a week and I enjoyed the program so much that I volunteered as a high school buddy during my sophomore, junior, and senior year.

Because I learned to read at an early age, literacy has had a positive impact on my life. I developed confidence in my school work and I had a passion for reading. I have been fairly successful throughout my academic career; however, I have lost some of my enthusiasm for reading. I wish I had more time to read books that I have an interest in, but for now my job as a student is to read the assigned texts.