My Love for Reading and Writing

My Love for Reading and Writing

Background: My name is Qianqian Wang, an international student from China, having been in U.S.A for studying since June. After three-month practice, I began to write my first essay, recording how I learn to read and write and my love for them.

When I was at poppy patch, my aunt gave me a series of animal stories as a birthday gift. Simple enough, I suppose. I cannot recall its particular cover, nor can I remember the plot. I cannot recite its facetious words, nor the means by which I obtained the storybook. What I can remember is this: I was a four-year old Chinese girl, living with my parents in dormitory building. I am the only child of my family, so my parents extremely dote on me. Whatever I need, my parents will always try to satisfy my desire, though they are only the ordinary workers at the power plants.

My mother, whose major in junior college was English, was a vivid reader of Chinese literature, liked essay, novel, four masterpieces of China and anything else she could find. I did not know when and where she bought these thick books. Since I was self-sensible, they were arranged tidily on the shelves according to the description. Sometimes, on the weekend, my mother would sit near the window with a glass of green tea, enjoying the comfortable afternoon sunlight and reading some proses written by Ailing Zhang who was one of the most famous writers in China. Maybe under the influence of my mother, I grew a love for reading. I could vaguely remember the image when I first picked up my mother’s books before I could read. The words on the paper were thickly dotted, just like the foreign wordage. But even so, I could still remember clearly my feelings when I first open my storybooks. It was a new world of beauty opened itself in front of me that was one of my most unforgettable moments I can hardly put it into words.

Although I was unable to understand the content of these stories, I was still attracted by its rich colors and lovable characters so that I kept pestering my mother to tell fairy tales from these storybooks every night. She held me tenderly inside her arms and whispered in my ears, whose voice sounded like breeze, accompanying me during my childhood. Gradually, I began to guess the meaning of those stories according to my mother’s tone. Therefore I could distinguish roughly who was happy or angry, for example, when she played the role in fierce wolf, her voice became deep and rough, but when she acted a docile lamp, her voice sounded like a newborn baby. My mother was adept in using different tones to express various sentiments. In addition, each panel on the storybooks was completed with cartoon pictures, dialogues and narrative for ease of reading. In one panel (The three little pigs), a little pig carried on down the road and after a while he asked a man for a load of bricks and soon he was very busy mixing cement and laying down brick after brick. I looked at the narrative under the picture but I could not read or understand these words, so I supposed it told me that:” A little pig is busy building his own house by using bricks.” In this way, I learned to understand the meaning of the sentence.

Reading books turns into my pleasure as my passion for it becomes more and more strongly with ages. When I was a junior high school student, I began to read some essays in details, containing the rhetoric and flowery words. I highlighted these beautiful sentences, transcribing on my notebook and often reciting them. I read books not only at recess and before sleeping, but also in the travel. There is always at least one book in my schoolbag, sometimes it is a magazine, and sometimes it is a novel. After a while, my notebook was filled with those elegant and rhythmic sentences. I respect these authors and hope I can write down my own insightful sentences just like them, so I start trying to imitate their sentence structures. At first, I simply stopped at imitation, something just like change the subject so that those sentences I write them down do not have their own life. They are just inferior replicas. Even though, I am still mad with joy that I create my own way to learn how to write. Through this method, I gradually learn to use euphuism to express my mind, making my writing becomes higher quality. After tireless efforts, when I was in my third year of middle school, because of reading more books than my peers, my compositions were commended by my Chinese teachers frequently. Not only that but my writing could be regarded as model essay, reading out in front of the whole class and receiving schoolmates’ appreciation. Garnering praise and affirmation from this stimulates me to work even harder than before.

After coming into senior three, due to the endless school tasks, I did not really have the luxury to further read more extra-curricular books, even browse the magazines. For passing the college entrance examination, I got up at 6 o’ clock in the morning and went to sleep at almost midnight every day just for having more time to reviewing. During this time, all of my spare time was used to review textbooks, do endless assignment and take tests. Nevertheless, I still resisted on writing journal with even just several sentences and accumulating good sentences on my notebook. Before writing essays, I always leafed through my diary to gain some useful material that really helped me a lot.

Now, I have left my parents, my motherland, coming to U.S.A alone for study. For me, the greatest challenge will absolutely be English. English is not my native language, which means I should make more efforts than others. For most of Americans, maybe writing is as easy as speaking. They can describe their life with detailed description and vivid images by using rhetoric proficiently. However, I just like a burble baby, having to learn from one word, one sentence and one paragraph. A lot of times, I cannot even hear what professors are talking about especially when they give some examples about the definition, just pretending I understand through body language and association. Although I have trouble talking with other people, I never quit endeavoring. After finishing assignments, I usually read some extra-curricular books like <Steve Jobs>, <Call Me Irresistible> and <A Hope In The Unseen> to expand my vocabulary. In terms of writing, I will force myself to accumulate philosophic sentences like what I do when I learn how to write in Chinese. I certainly know what difficulties I will face on my road learning reading and writing in English, but I still determine to learn English well. Fortunately, all my professors are kind and warm-hearted, especially when I need some instruction. For grasping English as soon as possible, I set up a particular plan for myself. At first, I must remember at least thirty new words by reading. Additionally, I am supposed to watch some videos about spoken language so that I can accumulate some slang and practice my listening in the meantime. Last but not the least, keeping writing journals that will provide me a lot of materials when I need to generate ideas. All I need to do now is insistence, which reminds me of a sentence “The primary ingredient to success is perseverance.”

By recalling, I firmly believe my passion and love for reading and writing will urge me forward and encourage me to tackle my tasks with even greater determination.