TO READ AND TO WRITE (Narrative)

I was a slow starter when I was learning how to read and write. I couldn’t understand something easily and I often forgot the word that I had just learned before. In the evening, my mother often taught me how to read words. After working, although she was tired working at the school, she would always had time to teach me at home. She would teach me how to read by reading the poster that she had bought before. The poster was large and there were a lot of words on it. She would read the word on it one by one and I would follow her speaking with my eyes looking at the word that my mother pointed. At the end of my learning process, my mother usually ordered me to write a word that we had read before. Well, honestly, I couldn’t write it beautifully. I remembered about the first word that I had written in the past, and its shape was very very far away from what was usually called as ‘good’.

When I reached 6 years old, I entered an elementary school. I didn’t enter any kindergarten before because in my village, there were not any rules that commanded the children to go to a kindergarten first before going to the elementary school. Because of that reason, I didn’t have much ability to read and write when I was entering elementary school. I only knew some words that my mother had taught me at home. 

Even though I didn’t have enough ability to study at school at that time, I was really motivated to go to school because I thought school was a very cool place. I would get more friends, more snacks, and more knowledge at school. In the morning, I prepared to go to my first class at about 6 a.m. After having breakfast with my family, my father took a picture of me and motivated me to study hard. After that I walked happily to my school until I met my first teacher.

My first teacher was Mrs Khorijah. By looking at her face, I thought she was mean. But after following her teaching process, I thought she was not that mean. Moreover, I thought she was a patient, dicipline, and creative teacher. I always remembered the first thing that she taught  to me to remember writing a word correctly. She told us to write a word by imagining what she was saying. When she was writing “i”, she would say ‘jret tul’ (‘Jret’ means ‘a horisontal line’, and ‘tul’ means ‘a dot’). When she was writting “b” , she would say “jret wetengen” (‘Jret’ means ‘a horisontal line’ and ‘wetengen’ means ‘have a stomach’), and then to write “d”, she would say ‘jret bokongen’ (‘Jret’ means ‘a horisontal line’ and ‘bokongen’ means ‘have a bottom’). She made all the words easy to remember and it was fun.

From her way of teaching, I started enjoying to write a word. The impact was , whole the wall in my house was full of my hand writing.

“Ras, What are you doing? Why did you write so many words on the wall?”, my father asked.

“I want to practice to write words, Father”, I replied.

Although I made all the wall dirty, my father didn’t yell at me. He was very patient and very kind. He was just giving me an advice not to write on the wall again and to write on the book instead. But still, I often wrote on the wall. By the time, I could write better. However, I still felt reluctant learning how to read. Then, my father bought me a magazine with the title ‘Bobo’ on its cover.

                In this magazine, you could find many pictures with a short story under them. One of the pictures was Bobo. Bobo was a rabbit which was the main character on that magazine, so that magazine was called Bobo. I really liked this magazine, especially the part about Nirmala. There were many nice and interesting fairies with their green houses. At first, my mother would read this story for me every night before sleeping. I enjoyed listening her story every night. But one day, she stopped reading it for me. She asked me to read it by myself. On one side, I was angry with my mother and made a plan not to read anymore until my mother would read it for me, but on another side, I really wanted to know about the story on that magazine quickly. Then, I tried to read it one by one. In the beginning, I could only understand about one word, but the next time I could reach another word step by step until I finished the story. I was very happy to finish reading the story and felt motivated to read more and more.

Then, I could read and write smoothly. I knew that it was not only because of my hard work. It was all because of them : my mother who let me read the story by myself to improve my skill, Mrs. Khorijah who taught me to write with a funny method, and my father who gave me a motivation. To read and write were not something easy for me, but because of  them I could pass it smoothly. I thank them for giving me something that is very important for my education, the ability to read and write.

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