How did you learn to read? by Tye Wuey Ping

How did you learn to read?
A few days ago, a friend of mine wrote an article in the column ParenThots in The Star newspaper about reading and young children. This article basically discussed about how young children acquire their reading skills, especially in the context of today's world where intense connectivity due to the emergence of the Internet related technology are playing a large part in the current generation of young children's life.

Although I am not a parent myself just yet, the article my friend wrote managed to provoke my thoughts about how I actually learned to read when I was young. Honestly, I don't remember how and when I first started learning to read. My response to her question would be similar to that of her husband's, “How would I know? I just did.”

Growing up in the 1980s meant that the generation of young children then never had the access to special reader's programmes and enrichment classes like the young children have today. I would say in fact, today's young children and their parents are spoiled for choice in choosing the method they want to use for the young children to learn how to read.

Those days, young children like me and my friend as well as her husband must have just picked any books or reading materials that caught our interest and we just learned how to read then. And yes, I did read most of the classic children tales like Three Little Pigs, The Little Red Riding Hood and The Sleeping Beauty, just to name a few.

Many of us then progressed to reading books that were the rage then, Enid Blyton, Carolyn Keene and Franklin W. Dixon, just to name a few. Mostly, the books those days were either borrowed from the school and public libraries or exchanged with friends. In fact, it was really fun exchanging the different storybooks with our friends and searching for them in the libraries then. As books those days were quite limited in terms of choices unlike today, I also read the newspapers and magazines that were the ubiquitous reading materials and available cheaply then.

These days, children get to choose what they want to read with many major bookstores mushrooming all over the country, especially in the Klang Valley. Yet you still get many children who are reluctant readers because they are more interested in the Internet and video and computer games, not to mention cable TV. The strange thing I find is that growing up in the 1980s, I was also exposed to playing video and computer games, also watching the TV but I did not get addicted to them like how some children are today. I would choose to read over video and computer games and even over TV shows too then. Books and interesting reading materials were better at holding me spellbound than video and computer games and TV shows then and they still do even now.

I guess reading is one of those simple activities I value immensely over many other material things in life, except for buying good and quality books and reading materials. Maybe because I realise that the value of the knowledge I would acquire is extremely immeasurable. And the knowledge I have acquired since young through reading can NEVER be measured against all the money found in this world. Not to mention, the excellent proficiency in language (in this case, the English Language) I have gained through reading.  I think for people who REALLY love reading like myself would probably agree with me.