Learning A-B-C: How I Learned to Read

I was appalled to learn that people use the Internet to harass others (Outrageous! "Keyboard Cowards"). It seems like no one understands privacy or respect anymore. The Web is for sharing information, not for shielding creeps who bully others.... These "keyboard cowards" have no respect for themselves or anyone else... (Reader's Digest Feb 09's Issue)

*I didn't know cyberbullying is world Internet issues until I read on reader's digest just as I thought "keyboard evil" is more appropriate until I read "Keyboard Cowards" ... they are COWARDS!

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This is just a post of my yesteryear's childhood cause-and-effect... does not imply anything of who I am today rather just a honest sharing.

In my early childhood kindy days, I went to a Chinese kindy when I was 5 (probably that was the nearest kindy to our house then) learning most subjects were in Mandarin, except for one Malay and one English language lessons.

Every Chinese character looked artistic or either square, horizontal or vertical to me. Our exercise books were pages with square boxes where each box is to be filled with a Chinese character. There were many characters to learn, piyin to catch where my mind cannot contain. Most of the time I was learning by-heart or by memorising, I hate writing and I learn very little. I wasn't smart, I was quiet, I refused to answer any question vocally, refused to talk (the teacher thought I was mute) and I was scared of the teachers that went on until my first few years in primary school. When I think of my early childhood schooling days, I felt bitter. I wasn't the last among the fifty students in the class though but I was slow, I either hide or throw away my result papers.

I don't know if it was the teaching method or the lack of early childhood training among teachers in the kindy in those times. When I look back, I compare with today's early childhood education systems, kids today learn to read as early as 5yo in kindies. Some as early as 3yo in nurseries.

Phonetics method was not used in my kindy days, I can't remember ever seeing simple phonetics charts or pieces of manila card on the classroom walls, but do remember learning by visual memorising (recognise some words by memorising the look of words) from textbooks. I started reading at seven picking up on my own. It started because I was a book person, loved books with pictures particularly but can't read except for knowing all the 26 alphabets there is and some simple basic normal everyday use classroom words like BUKU, PAPAN HITAM, GURU etc, give me a few words sentence, I'd look stupid and start to pretend to be mute.

One day, out of the norm while writing my own name, I began to realise my name Julita composed of 3 syllables JU-LI-TA. My very first phonetics started with the syllables JU-LI-TA there instantly and my venture into words took place, I took out my other books and began to create my own words by combining my name's 3 syllables I just discovered with other words like BU-KU, GU-RU syllables. Soon I'd compiled a list of new words without knowing the meaning like JUBU, LIKU, TALI from words I know and waited for our home tuition teacher to confirm what I thought would sound like. The moment when I showed the list of words I've created to our home tuition teacher was the most delightful moment as a child for me on that day, I learned how to read :) I eventually progressed from there with new unknown words each day, I think our home tuition teacher felt 'bullied' by me with wt-freak unknown words, I usually read after her word by word to confirm my own childhood words discovery and surprisingly she never asked where were the words from. I started reading from there onwards... Sarikei Library then became my favorite place I'd go to almost every afternoon, I read mostly Malay books and I can still clearly remember my first book was a short story about an office cleaner stuck in a lift for days, she drank the water from the cleaning bucket to survive.

If I were to be given another chance, I want to go back to become a Professional Child Educator with degree or master in child psychology. Well....

It's a long weekend.
I'm counting the days till my first RM1 trip I've been looking forward to... to...

Have a great weekend everyone!