As a child I had a speech impediment, so whenever I was called on to read in class I was made fun of. Eventually, in 3rd grade, I was put into speech therapy lessons to help with my speech impediment. My speech therapy teacher was always encouraging of me to read and practice pronouncing my words correctly. She introduced me to small fictional novels by reading small excerpts from the books and having me read them back to her. A majority of the books she read to me were Charles Dickens books. My interests in these books played a key role in the correction of my speech impediment, and even contributed to me gaining interest in reading fiction books.
After my speech impediment lessons I lost my interest in reading completely. Without motivation or purpose behind reading I found it not to
be enjoyable. Up until my 6th grade year in middle school I had not read a book independently for years. In my English class I was struggling; my lack of reading from previous years caused my vocabulary to have a very small range of words and my ability to take in information from works of literature and process it was at a minimum. I remember my class was reading “Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl”, and my frustration of not understanding what some of the words were and now knowing what was going on caused me to lose interest in the book completely. My grades were suffering because of my previous reading habits.
Before the beginning of my 7th grade year