From time to time my son’s brain visits this universe, but not often. He is in third grade, which is taught 50% in Danish and 50% in Greenlandic – two languages that he could not speak or understand in any capacity one year ago. None of his formal schooling is in his mother tongue, English. Some time ago we realised that this was a bit of a problem, as it’s quite important to us that he is able to also read and write English at an appropriate level for his age. So we started teaching him, three afternoons a week.
Every parent teaches their children to one degree or another and probably understands both the joy and frustration that this involves. Teaching a child can be fascinating and rewarding, but after explaining the same concept for the fifty-second time it can be quite challenging. My son largely falls into this latter category. After ten months of teaching the structure of the English language he still can’t remember the difference between a noun and a verb. Or rather, he can if he tries, but he prefers not to bother thinking about it. Once we get to adjectives and adverbs, things get very vague. And then you may as well forget prepositions.
Last week in our lesson we reviewed some of the main parts of speech – nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, and prepositions. I explained them all – again – and we practised with examples or categorising the words I provided. Knowing my son would have a hard time dredging any kind of knowledge from the depths of his strange little memory, and after reviewing with examples, I asked him what was the name you give to a ‘person, place or thing’, hoping this would generate a spark of recognition.
“A verb” he announced confidently.
“No, that’s a doing word”.
“Oh yeah, I knew that”.
“OK, so what is the name you give to a ‘thing’ – something you can touch, or smell, or hear?”
“Ummm”, staring at the wall…
“OK, it starts with ‘n’ – can you remember?”
“A nadjective!”
