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ABC Hooked On Phonics Worked For Me!
Except that when they demonstrated phonics with "start with the most common sounds," I had to resurrect the old myth of the "short and long vowels" (rather than the Who knows naught of art must learn and then take his ease English vowels) so your friendly neighbourhood linguist was already getting the same reaction as with T-G Syntax, 'this is hogwash,' and restraining herself from voicing it. And the "most common" consonants our TESOL instructor had were b-g-c-t. I, already the phonology demonstrator, already making too much noise, sat seething inside, Most common? What about A SIN TO ERR? What about ETAOIN SHRDLU? Hopefully, i won't teach to a standardized curriculum, if this is what is on a standardized curriculum as far as teaching kids phonics is concerned.
As Eta Schneiderman said in Intro to Linguistics to the students going on to French Language Teaching, "Please don't teach your students medieval French, teach them the real language that is spoken."
Language acquisition, meet language teaching. Language teaching, you're going down.
But the greatest shock was still to come, at the end of the class.
We had to do a team game conveying to a team member a transcription of a text, to gain perspective on what non-English speakers may feel when trying to learn English, theoretically.
The text was Twas brillig and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe, all mimsy were the borogroves and the mome raths outgrabe.
And I discovered that in my class of 23, no one except me had ever heard of Jabberwocky.
No one. I was alone. He said that maybe one person per class knows it, if that.
This was my version of Siderea's famous "What Do You Mean, 'If'?"
They're warning me about culture shock? I am getting subculture shock, then and here!
Where I had been, everyone knew Jabberwocky. Linguists have studied it. Science fiction writers reference it without pause for thought. Logicians have all read Lewis Carroll. In elementary school, when the parent of one of my classmates gave us a workshop on robotics and language, he read us the example. And now....
Archipelago of Weird: I had thought that with Through the Looking-Glass, I was on the mainland. Realizing that I am still on an island, in that, still...
A workshop on robotics and language, in elementary school. Girl, you were on an island, in a hothouse for gifted children, in NT Central, all your life, to keep yourself sane. This is the majority of the human race. You were never with the majority of the human race.
Indeed I was not, keeping myself on an island of my own dreams and introversion, more than half insane and indescribably lonely, until the end of grade three, when the gods sent the gifted test to deliver me from the fate of being a ten-year-old suicide case. And I must say, Ottawa's junior enrichment program, especially grade four, was good. Learning centres, creative programs, meta discussions about gifted learning. I can still remember the questions posted around our classroom:
What is FLUENCY?
What is FLEXIBILITY?
What is ELABORATION?
What is ORIGINALITY?
What is WEBBING?
What is BRAINSTORMING?
What is ANALYSIS?
What is SYNTHESIS?
What is A.G.O (Aims, Goals, Objectives)?
I remember. And something in my lost Feeling that needs to be triggered by words makes me want to cry and want to go back there where it is happy and the people care about the things I care about and they think like me, where there's someone with whom to shuffle a card, or to call to across the plain, not for applause, but for the heart, to sing with in harmony twain --- someone who would understand, not often, just once in a while...
We were not gifted children because we were high-performing in the school curriculum, I now see. We were gifted children because we were Intuition-based learners, generalizers, systems analyzers, dreamers of dreams were we. And we were nurtured as such, because faced with the Sensory-focussed learning styles of the majority, we would be frustrated and go mad.
Like I am doing in TESOL learning, having to face the fact that I am a minority. That a lot of people are intimidated by my avidity, too, and by what they would simply register as smart. That I will make no real friends here. (I am no stranger to this; I made none in five years of university. except for a few quiz players.)
But I will never, never again pretend to be gentle and quiet and non-intimidating about what I love, pretend to be what I am not for the sake of being liked. "Don't teach the learned; the other way was already tried; only horseradish comes out of that." To not love linguistics and overarching systems, to slow myself down, to not be the clever kid, is a dishonesty that is almost painful, almost unbearable. I do not care about being liked and being popular; the only way to deal with this is to be so good that they can't afford to ignore you.
We were gifted children raised in a hothouse. It wasn't as isolated as Ender's Battle School, but from the subculture shock I feel on discovering the majority isn't like that, it might as well be. To save yourself from the frustration stage of culture shock, make friendship, they say. But I can't make friends, real friends, friends I can let myself relax with, with people who are so unlike me, which is the majority of the human race no matter in what country I may be. This is deeper than the trappings of a different language or customs or climate; the bonds of the archipelago of weird culture goes deeper than national culture, I think.
Unless I am very, very fortunate, in what job I find, in who my friends are, in who I have contact with to stay and support me, in what I do about this, I may become very unhappy in this job.
Remember, the enemy's gate is down.
And the mome rath isn't born that can outgrabe me.
Except that when they demonstrated phonics with "start with the most common sounds," I had to resurrect the old myth of the "short and long vowels" (rather than the Who knows naught of art must learn and then take his ease English vowels) so your friendly neighbourhood linguist was already getting the same reaction as with T-G Syntax, 'this is hogwash,' and restraining herself from voicing it. And the "most common" consonants our TESOL instructor had were b-g-c-t. I, already the phonology demonstrator, already making too much noise, sat seething inside, Most common? What about A SIN TO ERR? What about ETAOIN SHRDLU? Hopefully, i won't teach to a standardized curriculum, if this is what is on a standardized curriculum as far as teaching kids phonics is concerned.
As Eta Schneiderman said in Intro to Linguistics to the students going on to French Language Teaching, "Please don't teach your students medieval French, teach them the real language that is spoken."
Language acquisition, meet language teaching. Language teaching, you're going down.
But the greatest shock was still to come, at the end of the class.
We had to do a team game conveying to a team member a transcription of a text, to gain perspective on what non-English speakers may feel when trying to learn English, theoretically.
The text was Twas brillig and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe, all mimsy were the borogroves and the mome raths outgrabe.
And I discovered that in my class of 23, no one except me had ever heard of Jabberwocky.
No one. I was alone. He said that maybe one person per class knows it, if that.
This was my version of Siderea's famous "What Do You Mean, 'If'?"
They're warning me about culture shock? I am getting subculture shock, then and here!
Where I had been, everyone knew Jabberwocky. Linguists have studied it. Science fiction writers reference it without pause for thought. Logicians have all read Lewis Carroll. In elementary school, when the parent of one of my classmates gave us a workshop on robotics and language, he read us the example. And now....
Archipelago of Weird: I had thought that with Through the Looking-Glass, I was on the mainland. Realizing that I am still on an island, in that, still...
A workshop on robotics and language, in elementary school. Girl, you were on an island, in a hothouse for gifted children, in NT Central, all your life, to keep yourself sane. This is the majority of the human race. You were never with the majority of the human race.
Indeed I was not, keeping myself on an island of my own dreams and introversion, more than half insane and indescribably lonely, until the end of grade three, when the gods sent the gifted test to deliver me from the fate of being a ten-year-old suicide case. And I must say, Ottawa's junior enrichment program, especially grade four, was good. Learning centres, creative programs, meta discussions about gifted learning. I can still remember the questions posted around our classroom:
What is FLUENCY?
What is FLEXIBILITY?
What is ELABORATION?
What is ORIGINALITY?
What is WEBBING?
What is BRAINSTORMING?
What is ANALYSIS?
What is SYNTHESIS?
What is A.G.O (Aims, Goals, Objectives)?
I remember. And something in my lost Feeling that needs to be triggered by words makes me want to cry and want to go back there where it is happy and the people care about the things I care about and they think like me, where there's someone with whom to shuffle a card, or to call to across the plain, not for applause, but for the heart, to sing with in harmony twain --- someone who would understand, not often, just once in a while...
We were not gifted children because we were high-performing in the school curriculum, I now see. We were gifted children because we were Intuition-based learners, generalizers, systems analyzers, dreamers of dreams were we. And we were nurtured as such, because faced with the Sensory-focussed learning styles of the majority, we would be frustrated and go mad.
Like I am doing in TESOL learning, having to face the fact that I am a minority. That a lot of people are intimidated by my avidity, too, and by what they would simply register as smart. That I will make no real friends here. (I am no stranger to this; I made none in five years of university. except for a few quiz players.)
But I will never, never again pretend to be gentle and quiet and non-intimidating about what I love, pretend to be what I am not for the sake of being liked. "Don't teach the learned; the other way was already tried; only horseradish comes out of that." To not love linguistics and overarching systems, to slow myself down, to not be the clever kid, is a dishonesty that is almost painful, almost unbearable. I do not care about being liked and being popular; the only way to deal with this is to be so good that they can't afford to ignore you.
We were gifted children raised in a hothouse. It wasn't as isolated as Ender's Battle School, but from the subculture shock I feel on discovering the majority isn't like that, it might as well be. To save yourself from the frustration stage of culture shock, make friendship, they say. But I can't make friends, real friends, friends I can let myself relax with, with people who are so unlike me, which is the majority of the human race no matter in what country I may be. This is deeper than the trappings of a different language or customs or climate; the bonds of the archipelago of weird culture goes deeper than national culture, I think.
Unless I am very, very fortunate, in what job I find, in who my friends are, in who I have contact with to stay and support me, in what I do about this, I may become very unhappy in this job.
Remember, the enemy's gate is down.
And the mome rath isn't born that can outgrabe me.
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From:
no subject
I'm much happier here.
From:
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From:
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The kids that were my friends were like people from a foreign country. The average citizens of Oswego were from a different planet.
From:
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From:
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*blinkblink*
*BLINK*
I find myself astounded that you were the only one who was familiar with Jabberwocky. If I had been asked, I would have said that one would have to have been born and reared in a locked bomb shelter to avoid familiarity with the Rev. Dodgson's works, if only through the vehicle of Walt Disney.
Talk about a "Through the Looking-Glass" moment. Perhaps I should go make certain that the violets and roses aren't spontaneously bursting into song.
But then, I -- like you -- am a life-long resident of the Archipelago, albeit one with numerous relatives on the Mainland. We learn to recognize one another by the glazed look of incomprehension at the strange customs of the Mainland natives, and gather, like more traditional expatriates, in coffeehouses to remind ourselves of what is good about our native islands.
Maybe I've stretched that particular metaphor to the breaking point, but it is nonetheless true. I was reading Shakespeare and Kipling before I entered elementary school, and frustrated my teachers (even in the advanced placement program) by preferring conversations on geopolitics over the typical high-school girl's refrain of boys-clothes-boys-makeup-boys-shoes-boys-hair, and lest I forget, boys. Even to this day, my brain takes off on odd tangents, as evidenced by this little bit of doggerel (http://goth-hobbit.livejournal.com/60582.html).
So yes; we're strangers in a strange land. All the more reason for us Weirdos to stick together.
From:
no subject
So yes, glazed look of incomprehension at the strange habits of the Mainland, which apparently, unlike my assumption, does not cover Jabberwocky.
Maybe I'll be extremely lucky and a school for gifted children needs to be taught English by a magna cum laude linguist.
From:
no subject
These are, of course, code names:
Tex: Has no college degree, but I suspect falls into the "too smart for university" category, worsened by his ADD. Avid reader of, and thinker about, science fiction.
McGuffin: Is a science fiction writer. In fact, I first met him many, many years ago in our senior year at university, in an Advanced Fiction Writing class. Also designs and publishes tabletop role-playing games.
Anaktoria: Is a girl dork, an even smaller subset of those who are openly identified as ridiculously gifted. Not as writing-obsessive as McGuffin (few people are), but does fanfic. Has job doing something smart with computers, but would really like to go get a Master's of Library Science.
I met my best friend in elementary school when we were the only two girls in the gifted-ed class. This was a very, very large number of years ago indeed. She was my first Dungeons & Dragons partner. We are still friends.
We're all mad here, linguist. Come visit me and be amused, amazed, or appalled by my shoehorning of -- McGuffin's guess -- between six and nine thousand books into one apartment.
From:
no subject
You must live with your knowledge
Far back, beyond, outside of you are others,
In nameless absences you have never heard of,
Who have certainly heard of you.
Beings of unknown number and gender
And they do not like you.
What have you done to them?
Nothing? Nothing is not an answer.
You will come to believe --- how can you help it?
--- That you did, you did do something.
You will find yourself wishing you could make them laugh.
You will long for their friendship.
~W.H. Auden
Now I am nosily curious as to which one of those very cool people has a beard (should I or shouldn't I eliminate Anaktoria?) and whether I may have read any of McGuffin's published stuff, in Analog or sumthin'.
From:
no subject
*wince* No. It is only the easiest way and slowing yourself down or being dishonest isn't the only other alternative.
I'm going to caution you, as one mostly failed teacher to a hopefully more successful teacher to be, that teaching people of a different learning style and temperament (and culture) as if they should be you is going to fail and talking to them as if they should be like you will be picked up on and internalized by them. That becomes unpleasant and unproductive for all involved.
From:
no subject
However, it will involve research of people with different learning styles (I have taught some before, with varying degrees of success but without spectacular failure due to this) which I would appreciate picking your brains on at some opportunity.
Once I know I am a One in the class, it becomes much easier for me; as a teacher I can adjust, and adjust myself to, what is...well, being served, because I am more in the situation of being an individual. As a student here, I am served the same as the others, and expected to be like them (not necessarily like the teacher, actually). It's the being one of Many, and expected to treat them and be treated equally there, as a student, and discovering that those Many I am expected to be like are not like me, that I am expected to fit a template I can't even imagine myself in, that is frustrating me at this time; am I getting across what I mean?
From:
no subject
But I can't make friends, real friends, friends I can let myself relax with, with people who are so unlike me, which is the majority of the human race no matter in what country I may be.
I think you will find that this is, strictly speaking, untrue. What you need to make real friends, friends you can let yourself relax with, are people who will accept you as you are. They can be Mainlanders, if they are OK with your being an Islander. No, that's not common. But it's not impossible.
We are no different than any other minority: the majority is prejudiced against us, but doesn't have to be.
This is deeper than the trappings of a different language or customs or climate; the bonds of the archipelago of weird culture goes deeper than national culture, I think.
Yes, I suspect; there was a recent study which strongly suggested to me (and in its findings, shocked its researchers) that weird culture identity is stronger than racial and ethnic identity. Which I could have told them if they asked. I would also tell them it trumps gender identity, but they didn't look into that at all. I still haven't reviewed it and posted it. Meant to get around to that...
From:
no subject
In your experience, is that an acquired or an inborn characteristic? I.e. can two people get to accept one another by work together and persuasion, or is the kind of person who can understand Islanders born, not made? Am I getting through what I am trying to say?
I mean, there were plenty of coworkers and classmates and aikido classmates whom I've hung out with and it was fun, but they didn't last. Some of them I am "friends" with on Facebook, but I know it is just that --- a nominal weak tie, useful in case of information needs or whatnot, but very few of them are strong ties that have actually weathered the test of time. I am wondering whether this was because the circumstances were wrong, or I wasn't doing enough --- or it just isn't going to be there no matter what.
From:
no subject
oy.
Yeah, I think I want to stay in my hothouse. I am far to oblivious and elitist to work in a public library. Subculture shock is deeply unnerving...