How I Learned To Read And Write Essay

The most difficult text based on this assignment was “How I Learned to Read and Write” by Frederick Douglas. Comparing all the text given, Frederick Douglas’s writing was more “wordy”. He seems to express his feeling, thoughts and emotions in complex abstracts that are very hard to follow. The vocabulary words used are more complicated – such as, commence – which leaves me no option than to open the dictionary. He often uses the word “commence” which means “start”. It will be much easier to understand if he uses the word “start” from earlier of the essay. Moreover, he uses synonyms in certain words to beautify the essay, but causing it to be a bit intangible at the same time. For instance, he was describing his mistress of how kind she treated

It did not take that long for me to thoroughly understand the passage as I was surrounded with resources (dictionary and internet). After I find the meaning of the words, I put their meaning in parentheses beside the respective words and highlighted both the word and the meaning. This makes it easier for me to detect all of the unfamiliar words and understand them directly when I skim through the text for the second time. Sometimes, I tried to understand the words by referring to the sentence before and after the word, or maybe the sentence before and after the sentence containing the word I am unacquainted with. This way, I was able to understand the word and sharpen my critical reading skills without being dependent on other sources. Unless I have tried my best, I will refer to other resources to obtain the meaning. Uncovering the text can be boring, so I highlighted some quotes that I find interesting in most of the paragraphs. Therefore, it makes me more thrilled to continue reading as I can see my progress understanding every each part of the story. The essay seems clear now and I am very glad I succeeded to understand