Perspective
There were a couple of things that caught my attention as we did our schoolwork this morning. The first is that sometimes gains are made, but they are made so slowly that you don't realize they are happening at the time.
This was my experience with R. I had some tracing sheets that we had worked on a bit last year that I brought out again. Last year, this exercise was tough going. She had trouble both following the line and keeping the pen on the paper. If I remember correctly, it took multiple tries for her to even come close to completing it. This year? Well, she did it twice with very little input from me.
It's pretty darn accurate. And last year, the curved ones were a complete bafflement to her. I'd say that there has been some significant progress made.
The second realization I had was that we just cannot discount the importance of early language exposure in babies and toddlers. We started back with our grammar books this morning and the lesson we were on dealt with this, that, these, and those. It talked about when to use them and about how not to add extra words. For instance, you do not need to say, 'this here hat'. 'This hat' is sufficient.
When we got to the exercises, where the students were to correct the incorrect sentences, both G. and L. were beside themselves with mirth at how silly some of the sentences sounded to their ears. They intuitively knew what the correct words were and as a result found the incorrect words extremely funny. I eventually had to ask them to stop answering, which left K., Y., and H. to find the errors in the sentences. This was tough for them. Their ears do not automatically hear the incorrect grammar in a sentence. It is just not intuitive. We had to work really hard to discover which words were not needed.
This was true even for K., who has been exposed to English for eleven years. When getting down to how the language functions, it just doesn't come as intuitively to him as to children who heard English since infancy. He doesn't struggle with language or communication at all, a deep intuitive sense of English and how it works seems to be missing.
I strongly believe that this deep understanding of how a language works is what is built when we speak to our babies and young children and read them story after story. We are building their intuitive sense of language; a deep understanding of a language's grammar that they aren't even aware of.
Read and speak to your children. Screens won't suffice.
______
I'm making a quick trip to Arizona this weekend, so will not be posting. Enjoy your weekend!
This was my experience with R. I had some tracing sheets that we had worked on a bit last year that I brought out again. Last year, this exercise was tough going. She had trouble both following the line and keeping the pen on the paper. If I remember correctly, it took multiple tries for her to even come close to completing it. This year? Well, she did it twice with very little input from me.
It's pretty darn accurate. And last year, the curved ones were a complete bafflement to her. I'd say that there has been some significant progress made.
The second realization I had was that we just cannot discount the importance of early language exposure in babies and toddlers. We started back with our grammar books this morning and the lesson we were on dealt with this, that, these, and those. It talked about when to use them and about how not to add extra words. For instance, you do not need to say, 'this here hat'. 'This hat' is sufficient.
When we got to the exercises, where the students were to correct the incorrect sentences, both G. and L. were beside themselves with mirth at how silly some of the sentences sounded to their ears. They intuitively knew what the correct words were and as a result found the incorrect words extremely funny. I eventually had to ask them to stop answering, which left K., Y., and H. to find the errors in the sentences. This was tough for them. Their ears do not automatically hear the incorrect grammar in a sentence. It is just not intuitive. We had to work really hard to discover which words were not needed.
This was true even for K., who has been exposed to English for eleven years. When getting down to how the language functions, it just doesn't come as intuitively to him as to children who heard English since infancy. He doesn't struggle with language or communication at all, a deep intuitive sense of English and how it works seems to be missing.
I strongly believe that this deep understanding of how a language works is what is built when we speak to our babies and young children and read them story after story. We are building their intuitive sense of language; a deep understanding of a language's grammar that they aren't even aware of.
Read and speak to your children. Screens won't suffice.
______
I'm making a quick trip to Arizona this weekend, so will not be posting. Enjoy your weekend!
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