John Smith Reading Assignment

The two stories that I read about this week were “A Description of New Endland” and “The Generall Historie of Virginia” by John Smith. This first week's reading assignment was different than most things that I read about. The reading for this week was not the type of reading I would choose to read for my own enjoyment, but I tried to get into the reading as best I could. It took me a longer time to read the assigned reading than it usually takes me to read short stories. The language was confusing to me because many words were misspelled and I found myself trying to read the words as different words due to the spelling. For example, the word “for” was spelt “forre” and I found myself reading this as it was spelled in the reading, and realizing it was a mistake. The language was hard to understand, but after reading the same paragraphs over and over again, I understood the stories. I took many notes on the side of the pages for these two readings, to make sure I understood what was going on. After I read through these two stories I reread them again to make sure I had the full grasp of the knowledge I was supposed to be obtaining. Once we reviewed the stories the following class, I felt much better about the readings. Questions I had were answered, and parts of both stories where there was confusion were cleared up. I feel that I will have to do a lot more work than I usually do when I read due to the different language, but I feel I will be able to handle it. It was a good feeling after we reviewed the stories in class to know that I really did understand them. When I began reading the reading assignments I was very apprehensive and scared I was going to have a very difficult time understanding, but everything worked out for me in the end.