I don’t have the most inspirational story of how I learned to read. I’ve never looked back at it as a very significant moment in my life. All I did was learn to recognize the signs that are used to represent sounds. Anyone can do it. In fact most of us do.
However just because I don’t find the event as important does not mean I don’t remember it. I was maybe four or five when I first developed a curiosity toward the interpretation of letters. My grandpa used to read me these picture-books every day when I came back from kindergarten. Eventually I wanted to know what the small amount of text that was on the page said. I liked the pictures, but I felt like I needed more than just my own interpretation of pictures I may or may not have understood. So as every curious child would do, I asked to be taught. My grandpa was thrilled and eager to teach me. After a while I could read, I read slowly, but I could read. As cliché as it sounds, a whole new world opened up to me. I did not have to bother my parents or grandparents to read with me. In a way I became more independent. Also I started seeing myself as smart, mainly because most children learn to read in first grade of elementary school and I saw my-self as this Wunderkind who learned to read earlier. The truth is you don’t have to be a genius to learn how to read one or two years before you start school; however to the younger version of my-self it seemed like a bid deal and it made me more confidant.
The idea that I knew how to read stayed with me up until last year. When I came to English 10 Honours I felt like I haven’t been reading at all. I used to read the surface and nothing underneath that layer; rarely would I really see what’s hidden in the second or third level of meaning. At first I could not see all of the symbols, the metaphors, the analogies we were identifying in class, but I felt like I was beginning to learn. I started identifying the gender roles of some characters and the psychological states of others. But more importantly I started to search for these things by my-self, and books, essays and short stories weren’t the only things I started to “read underneath the surface”. I started seeing symbols and metaphors everywhere: in movies, in TV shows such as “South Park”. Not only did I start recognizing these things, but now I could not watch a movie or read a book that is only skin deep. In other words by starting to learn how to read, I also started learning to think critically. “I think, therefore I am” started becoming true.
So yes, it’s another moment I consider more important than the moment I started to put signs together to read words is the moment I truly started learning to understand what I read; however I’m not done yet, there is so much more I need to learn.
Elena Gagovska