English 101 - Hate and Love

Nhi Nguyen

English 101

Prof. Milenda Gueorguieve

02/15/2018

Hate and love

Reading is one of the important skill that we all need to have as a person. I love to read, but when I was a kid, I did not. Reading was a nightmare when I was a kid but now it is one of my favorite thing to do.

As a child, I did not like to read, I was not very good at it. At four years of age, I started to learn how to spell and read and it was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done. I could not memorize words and couldn’t remember the rules of spelling (there is the rules of learning how to spell Vietnamese words, we need to learn the rules to be able to spell and pronouncing). My parents tried anything they could do to helped me learn how to read. My mom bought many kinds of books for me, picture books, rhythmic books, fairytales, and she forced me to read it but what ever she tried to do, none of them worked on me. Her forcing had made me became hate reading. I would do anything to avoid “reading time” with my mom.

As a Vietnamese kid, we need to be able to read and write most of words before we enroll in first grade. Unfortunately, I was the only kid who could not read in my class. I was embarrassed anytime we had spelling or reading lesson because I was always the last one to finish reading. When the class had to take turns in reading out loud, I would always stumble over words and stutter. It made me nervous and I hated every minute of it. I thought this was how it was going to be forever but there was one book that had change everything.

At third grade, my spelling and reading skill had become better but I still far behind my fellow classmate. I could read and understand most of the texts my teacher gave me. My parents stopped forcing me to read and allowed me to learn what I like. One night, when I was sitting on the couch and watching TV with my dad, and I got a poisonous centipede bite. It was the biggest centipede I’ve ever seen in my life (it was calls Vietnamese centipede - Scolopendra subspinipes) and its bite had made me stayed in the hospital for 5 days. Lying on the bed in the hospital is the most boring thing in the world. At that time, we did not have phone or iPad or laptop to use for entertainment. The hospital did not have any TV so I ended up lying on the bed and staring at the walls.  The only thing I could do was read books to kill time. The first book that I read was Harry Potter and it totally change the way I think about reading and books. I never thought that reading can be that much interested. I was really think that I could be a witch and be a part of the story. The book had let me escape the reality that I am a patient, lying on the bed of the hospital, I became immersed in the world of Harry Potter and the witches. I really love the enjoyment I got from using my imaginations. My parents were surprised that I enjoyed to read a book because I always tell them I hate reading. “Harry Potter” has changed my think about reading forever. I became more interested in reading and I started to read more books after I left the hospital. I’m not reading just to kill time anymore but read to enjoy it.