It was a still day, cold and quiet, as I walked alone over rocks and snow. My heavy boots crunched through the crisp crust into the softer snow beneath. I stopped for breath by a small lake, ringed by rocky outcrops and, after my breath slowed, I realized that my breathing was all I could …
Two nights a week, I took the bus an hour across Copenhagen to the school where Danish classes were held. I arrived late at the first lesson, walked into the classroom, and sat down. A middle-aged man with dark curly hair was speaking in Danish to the dozen or so attentive students of various nationalities. …
Greenland is full of interesting characters and P is one of them – a Greenlander who has worked with my husband on and off on mineral exploration projects for many years. P is one of those rare guys who, with limited formal qualifications of any kind, is nonetheless utterly indispensible. Like toornaarsuk – a Greenlandic …
I was at a cafemik this week – coffee and cake at a friend’s house, to celebrate a birthday. There were a lot of people and my husband and I sat down with a group, some of whom we knew, some we didn’t. I got chatting to a woman I hadn’t met before. She asked …
My son is shy. It’s a struggle for his teachers to engage him in class discussions at school. His shyness is partly his nature and partly because Danish is his second language. Although he sounds fluent, there are still words he doesn’t know – like any nine year old, even using their native language – …
One of the means by which the schools in Nuuk encourage kids to socialise and reduce bullying is to have ‘food group’ events. Each month, a group of about five children from the same class – children who wouldn’t normally play with each other – converge on one child’s home for a few hours to …
My son started learning Greenlandic four years ago and although he can understand a lot, he still doesn’t speak it much. Now, after one week of Greenlandic lessons, I can understand why. Though the basic Greenlandic vocabulary is quite small, it requires that the many words that don’t exist have to be replaced by descriptions. …
‘The road to hell is paved with good intentions,’ they say. Greenland abounds in good intentions. Mine included. Last year, the Government of Greenland decided that English should be taught from year one in all schools, instead of from year four, as it was at that time. Great idea. English is the international language. English …
It’s well-recognised that we learn more effectively if new information is presented in a context that is familiar to us. We learn based on what we already know. This is called constructivist learning: we construct new knowledge from what we already understand. So using a framework that kids are already familiar with makes it much …