Wawa Yin
Professor Keen
ENG 234
How I Learned How To Read
I grew up in Taiwan learning how to speak, read, and write in Mandarin
Chinese. My mom started reading books to me when I was a newborn. Every night,
she would read a different book to me, either in Chinese or English. Since she was a
nurse, so she had been trained to know a sufficient amount of English. In Taiwan,
few people use the public library. Fortunately, my dad would often travel to the
United States to visit family and bring back children books for my parents to read to
me. Although I can’t remember, my mom tells me that my favorite book was
Goodnight Moon. At such a young age, I wasn’t able to read yet, however I enjoyed
listening to my mom read and associating the words with the illustrations.
At age three, my mom enrolled me in an afterschool program called Jump
Start. After learning how to read Chinese, I would go to Jump Start and begin to
learn how to read in English. I had a head start because my mom and dad read to me
in English many times before, and I knew the English alphabet before my classmates.
This is largely due to another one of my favorite books: Dr. Seuss’s ABC: An Amazing
Alphabet Book. Through the incredible and lively demonstration of the letters of the
alphabet I knew the shapes of the letters. The first month of Jump Start we spent
learning the pronunciation of each letter. This took a while for most of us because
we weren’t native speakers and people only spoke Mandarin around us.
Once I practiced using phonics, I was really excited to start reading on my
own! I remember I ran home that evening, grabbed my mom and a book my dad
brought home recently, The Cat in the Hat. I attempted to read by sounding out each
letter and then putting together the sounds. It did not come naturally like I thought
it would. I had to put it together like a puzzle, remembering that C makes the sound
“keh” like the letter K, that A makes the sound “ah,” and that T makes the sound “te.”
Then, I stuttered a little finally spitting out the word C-A-T. It took me a while to
finish the book, and I must admit, my mom did help me with a lot of the words. She
could tell I was frustrated so she told me to not worry. I was still frustrated; I picked
up another book and tried to read it alone. I failed. Instead of asking my mom, I took
a pen and a sheet of paper. I traced the words that I did not know how to pronounce.
I told myself that I would have to learn these by next week. As you can see, I was
pretty motivated as a kid. I would go over what I had learned each day; call me a
nerd.
My mom also came across these amazing videotapes of classic children’s
songs. Songs like “Hokey Pokey” and “Anything You Can Do” were on it. The
videotapes had children my age singing these songs and playing around at
amusement parks. Along with the children singing the songs, there were also
subtitles. The video, in a way, made me want to be one of those kids. So of course, I
sat down in front of the television and tried to memorize the lyrics. It wasn’t easy
because the subtitles went by fast. I rewound the videotape until I could catch each
word. I would watch the tapes for many weeks until I could sing-a-long without
reading the screen. These videos also helped me learn words because I listened to
the children pronounce the same words that were also in front of me.
I patiently learned and got used to the pronunciations and familiarized
myself with some basic words. My teacher was a tremendous help. The books he
would choose for us rhymed. I remember specifically that Madeline was my favorite
for that lesson. Rhyming allowed me to learn word families, allowing me to slowly
build my vocabulary. At the age of four, I knew words I had been taught, words I had
encountered, and even words I had never seen before. My dad bought a set of Dr.
Seuss books, and I flew through them. I remember my mom saying, “I told you so, all
you needed was a little more practice.”
After I was able to read the children’s books on my own, my parents could
not help me with English anymore. While I was learning how to read in English, I
was also learning how to read in Chinese. My mom and dad helped me with Chinese
after school. It was bizarre because Chinese was a bit harder for me to learn. I knew
the Chinese alphabet early on. But it was much more complex. Some Chinese words
(characters) were made up of one, two, or three alphabet characters along with one
of the five Chinese tones. This amalgam of phonic representations makes up a word
(Character) in Chinese. I did fairly well in Chinese. I learned how to read and speak
the language by the age of eight. However, I learned how to read and speak English
by the age six.
I moved to the United States when I was in second grade and proudly
attended Wells Elementary. There, we were encouraged to read. After each book we
read from the list, we got a sticker. If you finished reading all the books that were
available, then you get to pick a prize. The prize varied from candy to big toys. Books
on the list included the Junie B. Jones series, Amelia Bedelia Series, and others. I
hated reading at this age because I was forced to read at school. This took the joy out
of reading, and it did not make me feel accomplished. And books, that once were my
daily bread, soon became rather stale. I remember from the age of seven to twelve, I
hated reading. The reason for this was the stifling intellectual constriction that
forced us to only read the books mandated by the school. Once I got to Sand Creek
Intermediate School, the reading teacher would assign each of us a book to read and
give us all a reading quiz at the end of the week. I will say, I didn’t read a single book
she assigned that year. However, in the middle of my struggle, I found a series that I
fell in love with, Nancy Drew. I picked up one of her books and I could not put it
down. From then on, I began to read more books on my own, and up until now—at
age eighteen—I still love reading.