July 8, 2010
Stuttering When Reading Out Aloud At School
I will never forget the sheer fear and misery that I felt when I was asked to read out a passage from a book at school. This is something that the other children in the class seemed to do without a care in the world however for me it was something that I used to dread.
This was the typical scenario:
It is a Monday morning and my first lesson is English. I have just walked into the classroom and I have noticed that there is a book about Shakespeare on each desk. Straight away I start to worry that this could mean that I will be asked to read out in front of the whole class as this is something that I rarely could do without stuttering.
The teacher then walks in to the classroom and shouts out:
“OK class, quiet please. I want each of you, starting with Abbot (the first name in alphabetical order), to read out one paragraph from the book in front of you.”
This was not good – why can’t she (the teacher) just read the book to us?
I wanted to know which paragraph I was going to have to read. I knew from past experience that there are eight people ahead of me in the class; Abbot, Butler, Cohen etc. I had a quick check to make sure they were all in the room - which they were – I then counted down to the ninth paragraph and hoped that it would only contain a few lines of text.
I then looked at the words within the paragraph hoping that there were no, or only a few, “b” words – I just hated “b” words and found them very hard to say.
It was then a matter of waiting my turn to speak. This was not nice and that is putting it mildly. My hands would start to sweat and my brain would be going into overdrive with the demonic voices having a field day. The teacher would then eventually say:
“OK Steve, if you could read the next paragraph please.”
This is when I wanted my world to end – for the ground to somehow swallow me up and to take me away from this situation. This is more than just nerves, this is fear – a fear that only a person that has ever had a stutter can truly understand.
