Personal Response to ‘Room’

I do not particularly read very often, but when I do I struggle to put the book down. I enjoy reading fictional books that are similar to ‘Room’, because I like the thriller-like storyline that is told. I enjoyed reading ‘Room’ although I faced challenges at some points. When I first began to read the novel I found myself getting very confused with Jack’s language. For example, “Ma leans out of Bed to switch on Lamp, he makes everything light up whoosh.” At first, I thought that the ‘he’ that was being referred to was a man that was in the room with Jack, who he gave the nickname ‘Ma’. I also found that I was not able to skim my eyes over the text in order to read it that little bit quicker because of the language that was used to convey the character of Jack. At times I found myself having to read over the same sentences a few times to be able to make sense of it. I think that it is very clever in the way that it has been written from the perspective of Jack and used the same language that he would. It is written in the way in which a 5 year old boy would speak, and even more so, the way in which Jack speaks as we know he lacks some knowledge and understanding of word order and other grammatical rules. I had not previously considered how a fictional book could have been used in academic study. Reading ‘Room’ has greatly increased my understanding of language acquisition and language development. I am aware that some of Jack’s language would be the same as any other 5 year olds language, however I am also aware that in order for language to develop and keep growing, you have to interact with lots of people and lots of different things in the world. I have definitely recommended to others who have the same reading interests as me to have a go at reading this novel as I informed them how much I enjoyed it. I feel that reading this novel has developed my reading skills because I had to have patience to read it, I was not able to glance over the words on the page. I was required to carefully read it thoroughly in order to fully understand the story that was being told. It has encouraged me to read other novels and get back in to reading as I feel very relaxed when I sit down to read a book, and reading more and more will help me to further develop my reading and language skills.