Rsponse post: words I don't know

My writing goal is to understand what my whole class is writing because I hate coming up to a word I don't know.

This is from Nick’s blog http://tronwolf.blogspot.com/ and I really do feel the same way when I read other people’s writing sometimes. I really hate coming to a word and having no clue at all what its meaning is. I feel like part of this happening is just me having difficulties paying attention but I also need to make my personal vocabulary a little better such as reading from other texts, such as a newspaper or magazines. I feel I do not read as much as some of the better students in class or even as much as I should at my age and grade level, but I really need to work on my reader and my personal vocabulary. It also makes me very upset when I am reading in front of the class and I come to a word I am not sure of and I am afraid to say it because I don’t want to mess up the word and feel embarrassed because I don’t want to mess it up and feel stupid in front of the whole class.

For example, I can remember in the fifth grade the teacher would pick a student to read a paragraph and for them to pick another student to read a paragraph and so on. One word in the paragraph I was selected to read was; consciousness and I had no clue how to pronounce it  or what it meant. I was so embarrassed to read this word and also I was to embarrassed to ask what it meant. Later that night I looked up the word, so I would know for next I came across this tough word.