Perfect Practice Makes Perfect

I used to not be able to read as well as everyone else. I tried so hard in class to catch up, but I was never quite able to. I was told practice would make perfect. So, for awhile, I tried to read everything that I could get my hands on. I would read everything from a comic book all the way up to a young adult book. As a kid, I read and read and read, but it would take me a long time to complete whatever it was that I was reading. It was not until my grandpa tried to help improve my literacy that I really started to understand what all my teachers had been telling me.
My grandpa would always say perfect practice makes perfect. I know I have heard this quote from other people, including my swim coach and other teachers. Although, I have heard it before, it never made sense to me before my grandpa told it to me. He told me reading as much as I could, would not help me as much as it could if I attempted to improve my literacy and reading skills. Perfect practice of my reading skills would lead to improved reading. I started to improve my skills immediately when I looked at each sentence and tore it apart to find sentence structure. By breaking down each sentence and annotating each paragraph, I started to string thoughts and events in the selection together. It helped my reading so much and my literacy was getting better all the time. This was of course before I got actual grades, it was just check marks, but my marks all improved.
As my strengths improved in literacy, I could see improvements in all of my skills. I was starting to be able to read faster and I could understand more complex words. I did not have to ask someone else how to pronounce a word or try to find out the meaning of a word. I found that I was able to read at a level that was appropriate for my age. As my literacy improved with perfect practice, I was able to read above my level and this was something that I was proud of. As it turns out, my grandpa was right and perfect practice does make perfect. I think that I am a more literate person now than I have ever been and if I keep reading with perfect practice, my skills will only improve.