HUZZAH! Banned from Rentech.com!
ElviraGoth:
Quote from: ZephyrZodiac on 2005 August 19, 01:34:06
The trouble with language teaching in the UK is that, in order to make learning a language accessible to every child, no matter how much they are already struggling with their own, we have stopped teaching the rules, and just teach convenient phrase, questions and answers, till it's more like training a Pavlov's dog to salivate at the sound of a bell than it is like teaching any comprehension of the language!
It's the same here in the states. When I was little, my sister, who is 2 years older than I am, was in the last class at our school to be taught phonetics. Her class was allowed to keep the phonetics books, and I remember at 4 years old (before there was preschool) she and I would play "school" and she taught me phonetics. It gave me a head start on my classmates, most of whom couldn't even read yet.
I think my kids had some phonetics in the lower grades at school, as it seems I remember it was decided to bring it back. But I also remember that they had to learn anywhere from 25 to 100 spelling words a week in second grade. Not the meanings, just the words. And if they spelled a word wrong on the test, there was no retesting, they just went on to the next week learning the next batch of words to spell. At 7 years old, they were spelling words I learned in Junior High (13 years old)! But we also had to learn the meaning of the words back then.
ZephyrZodiac:
Quote
I think my kids had some phonetics in the lower grades at school, as it seems I remember it was decided to bring it back. But I also remember that they had to learn anywhere from 25 to 100 spelling words a week in second grade. Not the meanings, just the words. And if they spelled a word wrong on the test, there was no retesting, they just went on to the next week learning the next batch of words to spell. At 7 years old, they were spelling words I learned in Junior High (13 years old)! But we also had to learn the meaning of the words back then.
Somewhere between the two there's a middle ground which would work! Someone just has to find it!
ElviraGoth:
I guess finding the correct way to educate the youth in any country is as much a learning process as a teaching one!
ZephyrZodiac:
I think it's more a matter of profit! There's no profit in schools using last year's text books!
breyerii:
Quote from: ElviraGoth on 2005 August 19, 01:52:30
I guess finding the correct way to educate the youth in any country is as much a learning process as a teaching one!
I recall me and my buddy in England...
He came to me and explained a most formal way to ask for things, "Do you think you could please..."
Then he want into a bookstore (Waterstones) and put it in use. He told me, the clerk almost panicked faced with such a thing and retrieved the book he wanted in a frenzy of activity.
I guess it's some kind of rare phrasing, the sort of things you get with proper school training. My friend has always learned English in school.
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