How I learnt English by reading books

For every Urdu book I have read in my life, I must have read over 80 English books. But that wasn't always the case. When I first started school, my Kindergarten teacher told my mom that I struggled the most with English. Later my Class 1 teacher suggested that I should read more books to get better at it.

My first English books in school were Peter and Jane (Ladybird). At one page, I got stuck on 'This is a tree'. I kept looking at 't r e e' and I didn't know what it was and it didn't make sense. I didn't like that book or Peter or Jane or the 't r e e'.

Once, a lady at a dinner party asked me in English 'how do you do?' and I had no idea what that meant. I was only familiar with How are you. English was a strange language to learn and understand and school mainly focused on limited reading/writing/grammar and rehearsed conversation. 

I loved listening to stories that my parents read aloud to me, but I didn't actually read by myself yet. Then one day, as my mother was reading a story to me in the afternoon, she stopped abruptly at an interesting turn- to go and check on something cooking in the kitchen. I was so desperate to learn what happened next with the story that I picked the book up and forced myself to read. Something just clicked - the words came together with a meaning, and English felt easier to read than Urdu so I kept going. 

As an only child, books became my favorite past-time, my escape and my adventure. My mother encouraged reading as a treat, almost like chocolate or ice-cream, and a book was often a reward. She would get books for me and hide them somewhere in my grandfather's room. She called it the 'Treasure'. I did my best to track it down, following my mom around the house, searching Grandfather's room when no one was looking, but I was small and she hid the books on top of the cupboard that was out of my reach. One of the great mysteries of my childhood was the Treasure, and where it was hidden, and what amazing books were waiting for me if I was a good girl. 

At school, we graduated to Ginn 'Reasons for Writing' Anthology after Peter and Jane:

I looked forward to getting these in my course every year in Primary school, and I would read them right away during summer vacation. The first story I remember was 'Mrs. Long and her car'. Mrs Long bought a car that spoke in a commanding voice, screaming 'TURN LEFT!' at every traffic light, finally landing into a ditch near a train station. Mrs Long was obviously very upset, but the car was probably predicting the wide-spread use of the GPS systems of today. I recall this story each time I drive with the GPS on. 

Then we moved on to Wide Range Readers in school, these were by far my favorite. Some of the most wonderful, lovable stories that I have read in my life were found in these books. I somehow memorized them, and I think I'll put them in another blog post. These stories taught me so much about life and being a good human.

While school focused more on grammar, subject/object/verb agreements, present/past participle etc, I simply loved the stories. Over time, I just got a 'sense' of whether a sentence was grammatically correct or not, just by reading it. Even today, I cannot tell what the subject-object is in a sentence, but I can read or think it in my head and know if it is incorrect or what needs to change. I got better and better at reading comprehension and writing English, even speaking, and I could pick the correct tense in a grammar exercise, but I couldn't pick out if it was a past participle. I really didn't care.

At home, the Treasure was still waiting to be explored, one book at a time. Once I was sick with fever, and my parents were invited to a party, and I was crying about being stuck at home in bed and not being able to go to the party. I wailed and complained while my mom got dressed and to console me she surprised me with a book from the Treasure. It was called 'The Hot and Cold Summer' - I still remember seeing the title and choking back my tears. It was a good story, and I was glad I didn't go to the party after all. 

By this time, everyone in our family knew about my love of reading, and I began to get books as gifts. I got classics like Black Beauty, Treasure Island, the Pied Piper of Hamelin, the Borrowers, Tom's Midnight Garden, Little House on the Prairie, but I also got my hands on my Grandfather's old collection. I got Don Quixote from his shelf, I read 'Short Stories by Modern Masters' that I also borrowed from him (without his knowledge) - these included stories such as Dubliners, the Outcasts of Poker Flat, the Yellow Wallpaper and the Horse Dealer's daughter. I rescued 'Great Expectations' from a discarded magazine pile at my aunt's house. I read the Exorcist found in another discarded book pile. These were clearly meant for adults, but I was addicted to reading and just couldn't stop. 

When I struggled with difficult words, I would drag out the big Merriam-Webster college dictionary and look up the meaning. If there were hard words in the meaning, I would look up those words to get their meaning to make sense of the meaning of the first word. But other times I got lazy and just inferred the meaning by context, sometimes incorrectly. Dictionary-browsing was another favorite past-time for hot summer days during a power outage. There was so much information about everything imaginable in that big red book. Of course, this was life before wide-spread internet availability and Google.

One day, my mom got me a book called the 'Flying Saucer Mystery'. I was obsessed with Space and Aliens during this time, and a flying saucer mystery was exceptionally exciting. It was the beginning of my Nancy Drew phase. Over the next couple of years, I had read about a 100 Nancy Drews. 'The Ghost of Blackwood Hall' and 'The Clue in the Camera' remain my favorite Nancy Drew novels. Nancy Drew introduced some American history, culture and locations (states) to me. I had a book called 'the 50 United States' that someone had given as a gift, and I could look up state maps to see where Nancy was solving a mystery. 

We got Enid Blyton's from the used book stall one summer. I read them all, the Five Find-Outers and the Secret Seven, and the Famous Five and more. All about summer hols, and beaches, and picnics with potted meat sandwiches, some of the dialogue and themes a little dated (a little racist at times) but fun nonetheless. My favorites were the Five Find-Outers and the Ship of Adventure.

Around this time, my uncle was visiting from Canada, and brought a ton of books from a library book sale. I got Anne of Green Gables, Sarah-Plain and tall, Who Stole the Wizard of Oz, Ramona the Brave, the Cartoonist, Harriet the Spy, and many more. His daughter, my cousin, was reading a book at school in Canada those days, called Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, which she had brought along to read on vacation. So while she was busy playing- I finished that book in record time. This book was like no other I'd ever read - it had magic, and giants, and wizards and good friends and terrible teachers, and a castle with moving paintings and staircases. I have no words to describe the wonder and excitement I felt when reading it. I asked for nothing more but the next Harry Potter book whenever my relatives were planning to visit from US/Canada again. 

I started my journey struggling with the easiest word, and out of boredom reading adult novels, and then finally around 12 years of age I found Harry Potter. I read the Lord of the Rings after I saw the first movie, some time around 15,  in order to understand what the movie was about. I have never looked back, but I know I might still fail a grammar quiz asking me to find that pesky past participle.