Robin's story (a series of beginner 1 lessons)

Your comments are welcomed! I shall record them and put them in the LingQ library when my cough goes away.

1.
Robin is a little boy. He has a brother called James. James is twelve years old. Robin's sister is called Emma. She is nine. Robin is three. Robin is little because he is only three. Robin knows that when he is twelve years old he will be big.

Robin and his brother and sister live with their mum and dad in a house with a lot of rooms. Mum and Dad have a bedroom and Robin and Emma have a bedroom. James has a bedroom too. One room has a bath and a toilet in it. This is the bathroom. One room has a cooker in it. This is the kitchen. One room has a table and chairs. One room has a sofa and a TV in it. Robin likes this room the best.

2.
Robin doesn't talk much. That's OK because the others talk a lot. Someone is always talking. James talks to Emma, Emma talks to Mum, Mum talks to her computer and Dad tells everyone to be quiet.

Robin doesn't like to talk. He likes to play with toys. The TV is a good toy. So is Mum's computer. Robin likes things with buttons, and he likes things that make a noise. The TV makes a lot of noise. Robin knows which buttons make the most noise. Then everyone tells Robin to be quiet.

3.
Robin goes to school. When he goes to school he wears a blue shirt and a red sweatshirt and pants and trousers and socks and shoes. He has to keep all his clothes on while he is at school, even the pants.

The teachers tell you what to do. If you want to have a wee you have to put your hand up and ask to go to the toilet. Robin doesn't like that. Sometimes he does a wee in his pants. Then he has to take off his pants and put on other pants. You have to have pants on all the time at school.

4.
Robin is in the nursery class. In nursery you can do a lot of things. You can draw and paint and play in sand and water. There are also toys to play with. The toys don't have buttons so Robin doesn't like the toys much. He doesn't talk to the other children in nursey much because they are very little and he doesn't talk to the teachers because they tell him what to do. Robin likes to paint pictures of toys with buttons.

On Fridays Emma comes to nursery to help the little children. Robin talks to Emma because she is big and he knows how to talk to big people. Emma tells Robin what to do. Emma likes telling people what to do. Robin and Emma like Fridays when Emma comes to nursery.

5.
At home Robin likes to play with James' toys. James has lots of good toys because James is big. James has Daleks and Cybermen and TARDISes. He keeps them in his bedroom when he is at school. That's OK because Robin knows how to open James' bedroom door. Robin likes to go into James' bedroom to play with James' toys.

Robin can switch James' computer on and he can play James' piano too. He likes to play with James' magic lantern. James' magic lantern is very old. It is even older than Dad. James loves his magic lantern. Robin loves it too. He can nearly make it work.

How to be offensive: a guide for the polite

A lovely Japanese lady, who must rank among politest people on the planet, has asked me to scrutinise her forums posts and let her know if any of them are offensive. Now, I doubt that she has ever written or said anything deliberately offensive in her life, certainly not to strangers on the internet. I said as much to her (tact is not my strong point).

She said of course not, not intentionally. But how can she tell if, writing in a foreign language, she unintentionally makes an offensive remark? How can she tell what is considered unacceptable in Britain, in North America, indeed to anyone, in any part of the world? Nothing that I have said about the general reasonableness of people or the unimportance of offending people who don't know where you live has satisfied her. She wants a clear action plan for avoiding doing something she has never done and would never dream of doing.

This is tricky. To paraphrase Sherlock Holmes, it is a three-teapot problem. I have thought very hard over a lot of tea and come up with this idea: to teach her how to be deliberately offensive, so that she can recognise when she is doing it and so satisfy herself that she is not doing it.

I'm not an expert on offensive behaviour myself (it's not a compulsory subject in British schools), so I can only offer the following simple suggestions.

Consistently spell the person's name wrong.

If you quote their words, get them wrong. Make sure you give the impression that you did not read their words carefully.

If you like what they write, steal it. Put their comments on your web site without permission. Retell their best jokes and pretend you thought them up.

Tell them that they are ignorant of some common knowledge, like rules of good behaviour, grammar or punctuation. Telling them that they don't understand the history of their own country is a good move.

Question their mental state, also that of their political and religious leaders.

Make public any personal information you may have about them, in an unflattering way.

Make condescending remarks about their age, sex, race and religion. If possible, get at least one of these wrong. Say things like "I don't expect a kid like you to understand this, but...." to someone who a 27 year-old, call a Canadian an American, etc.

Deliberately misunderstand at least one point that they make every time you respond to them.

Either misspell your post to them (to show that you couldn't be bothered to check your words before posting them) or correct their spelling (to imply that they are too lazy to check their words before posting them). Be sure to correct their spelling if they are writing in their native language.

Express all your opinions as facts and say that anyone who disputes them is an idiot/bigot/heathen. Naturally, you should at the same time dispute every opinion expressed by your opponent.

Throw in very extremely unecessarily EMPHATIC language, such as &*$%ing OBSCENTITIES, CAPITALS and lots of EXCLAMATION MARKS!!!! This makes you look like an UNREASONABLE and VERY ANGRY person!

you could also try typing everything in lower case very long sentences with no punctuation at all which makes you look very mad and also unreasonable but not very angry.


I shall be setting all my politest and most charming students the task of writing me an offensive post. There may be a prize for the best entry. Watch this space.....

Talk like a three-year old

As both the readers of my blog will be aware, my smallest son has been getting into trouble at school. The teachers have reported very seriously that he has not been meeting his targets. Those are National Performance Targets, set by the Government. It's practically treason not to meet them.

"But he's only three!" I protested. "What can you possibly expect a three-year-old to be doing that he isn't doing?"

"He doesn't Interact Socially With Others. He doesn't Put His Hand Up to Ask to Go To The Toilet. In short, he doesn't talk."

Ah. This was difficult to refute. Birdy had by the age of three mastered the Old Homo Erectus dialect (point, grunt, point, SCREAM!) and decided that that was sufficient to meed his communication needs. Since he is a World Champion at opening closed cupboards, finding the biscuit tin, switching the TV on and switching Mum's computer off, he didn't really have any needs that he couldn't satisfy by himself. If the purpose of language is to satisfy our communication needs, then Birdy's language skills were impeccable.

I admit I was starting to get worried about him. Listening to all the other little children in his nursery class happily chattering away as they played Mummies and Daddies, I did wonder if Birdy might be missing a couple of cogs.

This term he has started playing with Big Brother's Doctor Who figures. (They are kept in a locked bedroom but that doesn't stop him.) He has been talking as part of his games, first repeating lines from the TV show, then riffing on them to create his own improvisations. I heartily approve. It's the LingQ Way.

First he amassed a collection of "all-purpose nouns". Anything with batteries in it is a deet-deet. Anything even remotely cylindrical and man-sized is a Dalek. Any tool is a screwdriver.

He also improvises new nouns. Shown a picture of a lawn mower he called it a "garden hoover". He explained to me how he wees out of his "willy button" (a part of his anatomy that I don't even know the proper name for). By putting two nouns together he can come up with a wonderfully descriptive, new name for something.

James at Birdy's age was good at making words up from scratch. He coined the verb "to spadge", as in "if you spadge together yellow and blue paint you get green". Emma would sing her remarks, and hum in the bits where she couldn't think up words.

It is interesting to think that, by the age of four, a child has amassed powerful coping strategies for talking about unfamilar objects or situations, whereas some advanced English students refuse to speak on "new" topics, for fear that their active vocabulary will fall short. I believe if they could learn to improvise, to "riff" on the language, they would be more confident speakers and also learn the "proper" vocabulary faster than they would by just avoiding tricky new topics.

Can we, as adult learners, learn to improvise like a three year old? Can teachers support learners in learning to improvise?

More on this topic later....

A funny story

"Can you read minds?" my daughter asked a small girl in the playground.

"No, I'm only on the blue books!" replied her little friend.

I want to be a teacher when I grow up!

[This is true]

I have applied for a teacher training course at my local college. I want to qualify to teach people, who don't speak English, to speak English. There ought to be a shorter phrase for that. In fact there are several. "English as a foreign language" implies that you are going to teach only foreigners, i.e. people who live abroad. "English as a second language" implies that you are going to teach only people who already speak only one other language, which discriminates against polyglots. "English for speakers of other languages" is wordy but inclusive, as it includes immigrants, the Welsh, sign language users, polyglots and extraterrestrials. But not, presumably, the mute. "English for thinkers in other languages" might be the ideal phrase, although I suppose that would discriminate against the very stupid.

My application form had no spelling mistakes and so I was offered an interview with aptitude test. I carefully dressed like a teacher (corduroy trousers and dangly silver earrings) and went along.

Only two of the other five applicants appeared to be native English speakers. In fact we seemed quite a multi-ethnic bunch. Reflecting on the wording of the application criteria I realised that being an English native, or a native speaker of English, weren't actually requirements. Fair enough, I thought. People who have learned English as a speaker of another language ought to be well qualified to teach English to speakers of other languages. As long as they know their subjunctives from their semicolons, and the students don't mind learning English with an Indian or a Portugese accent.

In her introductory statements our interviewer explained that knowing English grammar was actually quite important and we would have to have lessons to make sure we understood it. She also explained that there would be homework and it would really be a terrific idea if we did it all and handed it in. She said she had to make that very clear at the interview because people often drop out of the course because that they had failed to realise they might have to write an essay or two. I nodded thoughfully and doodled a cup of tea.

We were then handed our aptitude tests. I had to read the questions several times. Were they trick questions cunningly disguised to look like they had been written by an eight year old? There was one spelling question, one punctuation question, one singular vs plural verb question, and one reported speech question. Surely it couldn't be that easy? I put a perfect subjunctive and a semicolon into my answers just for devilment. I hadn't come all that way not to show off a bit.

Then there was an essay on "Why I want to be a teacher" (200 words).

While we were sucking our pens and looking thoughtful, or in my case fantasising about pots of tea, we were called in for our interviews.

I had explained about my LingQ experiences at some length on my application form, which had clearly amazed and possibly dismayed my interviewer. She read out with obvious disbelief the list of languages I claimed to speak.

"What is the commonest problem you have encountered with people learning English?" she asked.

"Perfectionism!" I replied without hesitation. "Many of my students are professional people who have invested years of their free time in learning English, and they still aren't satisfied with their achievements. They set themselves unattainably high goals and it affects their self-confidence."

There followed a short silence.

"You won't get students like that here," responded my stunned interviewer. "Our students are the kind who don't do any work and they wonder why they find it hard. How will you get them to do their homework?"

I thought about this. "I think I will explain to them that they should do their homework if they want to be able to speak English," I ventured at last.

The interviewer nodded. This seemed to be the expected answer.

After a few more questions (clearly she was using the same questions for each interview) the interviewer asked me the Time Management Question.

"How much time do you spend on your studies?" she asked.

"About three hours a day," I answered.

Another thoughtful pause, with more reading of my application form.

"You have three small children....yet you find THREE HOURS A DAY for study?"

I shrugged. I pulled my mp3 player out of my pocket and my ebook reader out of my shoulder bag.

"Here are my learning materials," I said. "I have little quality time, but I'm good at making the most of odd minutes. I listened to 10 minutes of Harry Potter in Russian just waiting for this interview to start."

I have no idea whether I passed the selection proceedure. I may have been too cocky, and I think the jokes I put in my essay went a step too far. I think, however, I made an impression on my interviewer. She was looking pretty shell-shocked when I left. She's not going to forget the Woman From LingQ in a hurry.

I've got a note from my kids excusing me from Parents Evening

[This is true]

I hate Parents Evening and I get out of going to it whenever I can. In theory, having three children in full-time education, I should attend three Parents Evenings per term. In practice James doesn’t seem to have them regularly and I suspect he has perfected the art of losing his letter on the walk home. That suits me just fine. Anything that spares me from hearing a teacher’s opinion on one of my kids is a bonus as far as I am concerned.

Don’t get me wrong, I have a lot of respect for teachers. It’s just that, after nine years of having school age kids, I have come to realise that anything a teacher says about your child, another teacher will say the exact opposite based on exactly the same observations, and neither one is going to listen to what Mum has to say about it.

James’ teachers have always divided evenly between those whose think he is gifted and those who think he is psychologically disturbed, and they only need to answer the simple question: “Will he get a Nobel prize or an ASBO?” to give me all the benefit of their professional opinion that I need.

Mim’s teachers split into those that think she is dim and lazy and those that think she is clever and hard-working. Presumably it depends on whether they like her, or whether she likes them. In any case, whichever I hear at Parents Evening, next term or next year I will hear the exact opposite.

Birdy’s teachers worry that he doesn’t talk very much. There are no two ways about it: he doesn’t talk very much. They can’t fix it; I can’t fix it. Either he will catch up with the others or he will remain silent. He’s not dim, he’s just not chatty. I can’t see any point in spending another 10 minutes discussing it when we could all be drinking a cup of tea and eating a chocolate biscuit instead. Which goes to show: whatever the cause of his taciturnity may be, it runs in the family.

Let’s be honest: any teacher who needs to sit the parent down for 10 minutes once a term to say “Little Jimmy stills chews gums in class and can’t do long division” is a teacher with poor communication skills. Anything that the parents really need to know should have already been communicated to them, via letter or e-mail or a “Could we have a word in the corridor?” meeting.

A really experienced teacher can convey to me all I need to know about my kids’ progress with a shrug and knowing smile. In James’ case, often glancing up towards Heaven and crossing themselves as well.

James needs his head examining - again

[This is true]

What is it with my kids? No sooner have I soothed the ruffled feathers of one of their teachers when another of the kids gets into trouble.

On the positive side, the Health Visitor (otherwise known as Government Snoop) came round and talked to Birdy. She pronounced him as very bright, probably bored out of his little mind at nursery school, giving his teachers the silent treatment just to annoy them. That's a worry off my mind, I had been imagining a language disorder or Autistic Spectrum.

Onto the next problem child. James is in trouble (again) for poor timekeeping, disorganisation, forgetting his own name and generally being odder than his teachers feel they can cope with on a daily basis. He claims to see dead people, and although this is probably a joke, with him it is very difficult to tell. His teachers think he may be taking drugs.

I have grown accustomed to his ways, so I went to explain the notion of "schizotypy" to them. His teachers were clearly unnerved by the idea of a year seven boy having hallucinations, paranoid ideas or delusions of super powers. Although they seemed to believe what I was saying (which was a pleasant change from being treated as a fantasist), they weren't really happy about taking my word for it. If he is to be excused from Reality on a regular basis a note from Mum isn't really adequate documentation. A note from the doctor would carry much more weight in his permanent record, or better yet, a psychologist's report.

"There's not much point in referring him to an educational psychologist," I said, wearily. Been there, done that, got the psychologist's report. "They only look for evidence of learning difficulties. They aren't interested in his odd ideas."

"Nooooooo...." said the Special Needs Manager. "That sounds more like a job for mental health professionals."

"He's not ill!" I said quickly, deciding not to mention the telekinesis, visitations from the dead and UFO sightings.

"No, no, of course not!" said Mr Special Needs very soothingly and slightly too quickly. "But they are trained to assess these things, and they know all the terminology for hallucinatory experiences. His GP can refer him to CAMHS and they can assess him and write us a report for his file."

Ho hum. I suppose I'd better make him a doctor's appointment then. "Please can you arrange to have my son's head examined because he is acting so strangely that it's attracting attention even in a state school". I think, on balance, it might be better not to mention it to Grandma. She'll blame me for bringing him up mentally unstable.