A beam of light is giving me a comfortably clear vision to read the book called “Ship of Theseus” in the cozy afternoon. Sitting on a couch near the window and flipping the pen with a broken cap in my hand, I can still recall the day my first community college English class-reading test took place.
I was so nervous while going through the long pages that I put the pen near my mouth and accidentally bit the cap off of the pen. One of my many bad habits before was that I would bite the pen cap while trying to read and think about the text at the same time.
However, now I’ve changed the biting habit into the flipping habit, which may not seem any different to others, but it does mean a lot to me. Because the change of habit also reflects my development as a reader, which my English class instructor named Erinn has played an important role during the process. She taught me a special method to read which eased the tension I had and built confidence inside of me towards literacy.
I always had trouble being patient and focused to do pages of reading even in my native language, which is Chinese. Understanding the text while reading seemed to be a huge task for me to accomplish at the same time. However, unlike reading texts in my Chinese, reading in a second language makes this task even harder. Therefore, reading in English usually made my mind drift away.
It usually cost me to read more than once because I always unintentionally start to fill my head with what to eat this night and who to hang out this weekend when I read several pages. Although my mind was drifted away by thinking about the irrelevant things, I still pushed myself to read each word yet I failed to understand the message the writer tried to deliver as a complete sentence or a whole paragraph.
Thus, when it came to my first reading test, I watched Erinn putting up questions related to the reading material on the board and I became really nervous. I was distracted by the sound that other students flipping the paper more than focused on my own reading.
My heart almost popped out when Erinn walked by me because I hadn’t even finished my reading not to mention written down any answers to the questions. What I didn’t expect was that Erinn whispered me to come to her front desk in the class and she would show me how to do the reading.
“Circle out all the subjects, verbs and objects.” She said gently. Although I was surprised because I only did that in middle school and also didn’t know the meaning of this action, I still circled out all the words that she asked me to. “Apply this method to the rest of the pages,” She looked me in the eye, “It’ll be much easier to understand sentences because you have made its structure clear.” I nodded my head though I still didn’t see any meaning of this method.
I kept circling a few more sentences after I went back to my seat. The good thing was I wasn’t biting my pen’s cap anymore and I started to really understand the text while reading it. The bad thing was it consumed too much time that I lost my patience so I began to read in my old way again.
I skimmed the reading sentence by sentence with the sound of me biting the pen cap, my speed was promoted however I found out I didn’t get any messages of each paragraph. Because I didn’t really understand the texts, I was just doing the silent reading.
The anxiety flooded me and when I looked back at the paragraphs, which I did understand, were the ones I used Erinn’s method. With the strong desire to finish the test on time, I tried to stay as patient as possible to go back from the start.
Nevertheless, I found that by circling put the subjects, verbs, and objects, I was more clear what the author was trying to say and it helped me to think while processing reading. That was the first time I felt like reading is something that I could participate and interact with.
As I turned in the test paper, Erinn said, “Thinking activates Reading” which I found so true that I keep using this method today whenever I find myself drifting away by the black texts and white paper. Instead of biting on my pen cap which I used to do, now I use my pen to help me think and keep focused on the texts by gently underlining the subjects, verbs, and objects.
I used to think reading as a suffering thing to do, but now I see reading as a much more fun task. As I practice reading more with circling out the elements and understanding the structure, I’m more familiar with these English words.
Sometimes I even have these invisible circles that clarify the structure on my mind as if I already circled the elements on the paper. Now I can sit in front of my desk and read my English class’s reading assignments patiently and without falling to sleep or thinking about irrelevant things because I feel involved and activated.
What Erinn taught me is not only a method towards reading, but it is also an attitude. Reading can be boring and confusing to readers no matter what language, so I believe many people besides me have the same problem that they start to lose focus when reading too much.
Therefore, interacting with the reading become crucial, we have to keep our head operating in order to think while reading. My method towards this is using what Erinn taught me---Circling the essential elements of the sentence in order to make the structure clear.
