Back to the roots and water them with coffee

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Caromarlyse
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Re: Back to the roots and water them with coffee

Postby Caromarlyse » Mon Sep 13, 2021 9:34 am

I think your sister is lucky to have you!
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sfuqua
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Re: Back to the roots and water them with coffee

Postby sfuqua » Mon Sep 13, 2021 1:48 pm

What a log!
As a retired teacher, I am teary eyed over you sister's experiences.
I am cheering for her!
I read some of the log to my daughter, a beginning German student who is totally in love with the language and her teacher at this point.
She got all serious and worried when she heard about your sister's difficulties.
5 x
荒海や佐渡によこたふ天の川

the rough sea / stretching out towards Sado / the Milky Way
Basho[1689]

Sometimes Japanese is just too much...

Cavesa
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Re: Back to the roots and water them with coffee

Postby Cavesa » Fri Sep 17, 2021 10:17 am

My previous post got erased due to an internet connection problem :-( So, this will be like two in one, but shorter.

Thanks a lot for your support! It means a lot and helps. It is sometimes hard and she is starting to hate me, which I understand. It's rather intensive.

A few days ago, we finished TA 1 Arbeitsbuch!!! It was a huge milestone. It went better after the Unit 8, which was simply a crisis point.

My sister also goes to school (partially as she is now ill. Nope, our society hasn't learnt from Covid, the other infectious diseases are still no excuse to not come to some school subjects). She answers in the German class (half a Themen before us) sometimes right, sometimes wrong, that's ok. But then the teacher gave her an "easy" question: to list the prepositions with the 3rd case. WTF? I am all for conjugations or declinations, as those are useful patterns to practice. But memorising and parroting such lists of nonsense, that's harmful. Especially as so many prepositions are with either the 3rd or 4th case (yes, we already discussed the problem of the case terminology a few pages earlier).

We are now in the 3rd Unit of TA 2. Most grammar points are not entirely new, they were either introduced in TA1, or we covered them in the other exercise book. I sort of dislike the way textbooks chop one logical chunk into several ones, trying to not overwhelm the learner. Sometimes, they just confuse the person. The main new things is a much stronger focus on the composed sentences (hmm, I may not be writing the English terminology right, but you know what I mean)

We are now fighting the connective words and composite sentences. It is not easy, and we are again given just half an explanation. I got wonderful replies to a superlative problem yesterday (note to self: go and thank in the right thread), and this is similar in nature. We are being explained two different word orders, but there is a "small" variation possible within one of the categories. Also, I am facing a sort of resistance to normal logical analysis like "cause" and "consequence", without which you simply cannot understand the differences between "weil" and "deshalb" or "trozdem" and "obwohl". And we also need "subject", "object" etc, when we talk about the sentence structure.

I am discovering another very common school trauma: people hate sentence analysis, it is usually the number one thing mentioned in any "the curricula are outdated and old fashioned, useless for today's world". But it is important. Not for analysing every sentence till the end of our lives, but for the good habits, for the ability to analyse it in case of need in the native or foreign languages, and to train people in logical writing. Many people today are unable to write an email that would be easily understood, including people with a degree. And the mental block at the very mention of stuff like "which noun is the object and which one the subject?" is making my work with my sister harder right now. It is not an absolute block, she is capable of thinking logically and her German is improving thanks to the logic. But I think the worse moments triggered by this are a sort of pavlovian reflex "heh, a basic grammar terminology word, I should resist and refuse to think!".

And again, the book shows some lack of attention of the authors and editors. Like the exercise sentence including "34", and the key "55", and so on. These small things are a bit unpleasant and sloppy. There have been some difficult exercises in Unit 2, which were really a wall of text, it was already hard to concentrate and not get lost. Sloppiness of the authors can really add a new layer of difficulty.

We got a new secondary tutor. She is good, I think I wrote about her already. She really makes her speak and accepts being a part of a project. So, no waste of time on things I can do or things not relevant at all to the exam. The only "flaw": she is not scary enough to practice the exam stress.

One week left.
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luke
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Re: Back to the roots and water them with coffee

Postby luke » Fri Sep 17, 2021 11:37 am

Cavesa wrote:My previous post got erased due to an internet connection problem :-( So, this will be like two in one, but shorter.

Thanks a lot for your support! It means a lot and helps.

We got a new secondary tutor. She is good, I think I wrote about her already. She really makes her speak and accepts being a part of a project. So, no waste of time on things I can do or things not relevant at all to the exam. The only "flaw": she is not scary enough to practice the exam stress.

One week left.

I'm rooting for you all.

The bonds created sister to sister here will last forever.

Oh, and Iversen taught me a trick about internet connections the other day. It was either "hit the back button" or "hit the refresh button" and the post will magically still be in your browser. I forget the trick precisely now, but it worked and I've had many of those "lost my post" experiences, so tricks to find them are appreciated.

In case any readers are curious about the sense of the first statement:
dictionary.com wrote:root
verb (used without object)
to encourage a team or contestant by cheering or applauding enthusiastically.
to lend moral support:
The whole group will be rooting for him.
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Iversen
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Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1027
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Re: Back to the roots and water them with coffee

Postby Iversen » Fri Sep 17, 2021 11:27 pm

The most important trick is of course to press "remember me" because you then won't be kicked out - and I even think it was Luke who taught me that.

As for syntax pedagogics: I'm so old that I was taught to use x for subjects and some other graphical signs for other parts of a sentence. But if I for some reason want to illustrate a sentence structure now I use letters (S for subject etc.), and I think in boxes and sticks - for instance a relative pronoun is connected to its antecedent (the thing it refers to) with a stick. It may sound like a silly game, and mostly I just imagine the structure rather than write it down, but sometimes it helps to think in imagery rather than just in words.
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Re: Back to the roots and water them with coffee

Postby Querneus » Sat Sep 18, 2021 10:54 am

Cavesa wrote:But then the teacher gave her an "easy" question: to list the prepositions with the 3rd case. WTF? I am all for conjugations or declinations, as those are useful patterns to practice. But memorising and parroting such lists of nonsense, that's harmful. Especially as so many prepositions are with either the 3rd or 4th case (yes, we already discussed the problem of the case terminology a few pages earlier).
Incidentally, I'm amused by how Czech people like to talk about cases in languages with numbers. You hardly see anyone else discuss German or Latin (or Czech!) this way while speaking English, besides Czechs. :)

And the mental block at the very mention of stuff like "which noun is the object and which one the subject?" is making my work with my sister harder right now. It is not an absolute block, she is capable of thinking logically and her German is improving thanks to the logic. But I think the worse moments triggered by this are a sort of pavlovian reflex "heh, a basic grammar terminology word, I should resist and refuse to think!".
I also find this interesting because you'd think subject vs. object would be easier for a native speaker of a language with nominative vs. accusative case to understand, but it looks like I should know better.

Good luck, and I hope your sister looks back to this time more positively later!
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Cavesa
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Re: Back to the roots and water them with coffee

Postby Cavesa » Sat Sep 18, 2021 4:48 pm

We are moving forward quite well. We are still in Unit 3, but we've also done a lot of exercises in the Green Monster. Finally, after several conflicts and tense situations, she understood what is a cause and a consequence!!!! And therefore she improved her use of the connector words immensely. The puzzle pieces fall together quite well.

Unit 3 has been intense. Some things are mostly review and systematisation of stuff we sort of know (such as the prepositions with verbs etc), but konjuktiv is new (but less horrible than it would seem at first. And I am still not sure whether I like TA's strategy to pretend "möchten" is a separate verb in the present tense, this trick should have been abandoned already, it's not that clear).

The whole "darum" "darüber" "worüber" etc business is not welcome in our world. It feels like a betrayal and an unnecessary complication :-D

As my sister said (loosely translated) "hmm, TA 1 was nice, but TA 2 is taking us places I never wanted to go".

Imagining German might exist only in Themen Aktuell is a stupid but very soothing thought. Most people complain about a language being only in the textbooks and not presented in real stuff. Not my sister. Two days ago, I tried to convince her how much she knows and how useful it is. So, I found a beautiful and very calming article about cats! It went well, we were able to read one third of it, but she simply hates German being used in the real world :-D I didn't please her with music either (I tried Lacrimosa, Faun, Nena). Nope, German is less annoying, when it is approach more like Latin than like a real thing that could be used in the real life :-D

https://herz-fuer-tiere.de/haustiere/ka ... ZLJ4jWPr3s

But she really is better and better with the tenses, all those drills are useful. She is already better than some other people in the class. Of course she cannot compare to the best classmate, but she is now definitely in the average (thanks to not only our intensive work but also the rather lazy approach of a part of the class of course. They are not all hard working geniuses and she is not stupider than them), just needs to show it at the exam. The secondary tutor thinks the same, this is not a person deserving a failing grade.

The German grammar feels a bit like a Tardis now :-D
...............

About the connection issues: yes, clicking on back or refresh, that helps sometimes. But not always. It depends on when exactly I lose connection (or rather the wifi loses connection to the internet), and for how long. I'm now looking for the "remember me" button.

The syntax is not that bad, the problem is really psychological imho. It's a reflex, not a real problem with understanding the concepts. The graphical representation may be good. I sometimes draw in the sentences, such as circles around stuff that is the closest to each other and therefore grammatically affecting each other, what gives more info about what, etc. Sometimes, it is very useful, but not always.

Querneus wrote:
Cavesa wrote:But then the teacher gave her an "easy" question: to list the prepositions with the 3rd case. WTF? I am all for conjugations or declinations, as those are useful patterns to practice. But memorising and parroting such lists of nonsense, that's harmful. Especially as so many prepositions are with either the 3rd or 4th case (yes, we already discussed the problem of the case terminology a few pages earlier).
Incidentally, I'm amused by how Czech people like to talk about cases in languages with numbers. You hardly see anyone else discuss German or Latin (or Czech!) this way while speaking English, besides Czechs. :)


Yes, and I hate it!!! We already discussed it a few pages ago. Some resources (even German ones, american ones, etc) order the cases like nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, some differently. But Czechs also mix this problem with using the numbers. It does get confusing, especially when the same thing is represented in the Kursbuch in a table in one order, and in the Arbeitsbuch in a different one. And even the Arbeitsbuch uses sometimes the order 1234, sometimes 1342, sometimes 1432!!! :-D Two problems amplifying each other. If we could get rid at least of the number, that would be great!


And the mental block at the very mention of stuff like "which noun is the object and which one the subject?" is making my work with my sister harder right now. It is not an absolute block, she is capable of thinking logically and her German is improving thanks to the logic. But I think the worse moments triggered by this are a sort of pavlovian reflex "heh, a basic grammar terminology word, I should resist and refuse to think!".
I also find this interesting because you'd think subject vs. object would be easier for a native speaker of a language with nominative vs. accusative case to understand, but it looks like I should know better.


The problem is imho mostly psychological. Teachers are disheartening people in the Czech lessons (because they don't focus on the important stuff, they also need to mix in the few bits that are totally worthless and arbitrary, and people therefore remember the whole experience like this. I doubt that even an average teacher really understands the "complement" and "apposition", but that shouldn't keep people from understanding "subject" and "object".) The discussions in the media take this as the "best" example of worthless outdated knowledge that should be cut out from the curriculum. It is not hard, but people are taught they should find it hard.
6 x

Cavesa
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Re: Back to the roots and water them with coffee

Postby Cavesa » Tue Sep 21, 2021 5:43 pm

We've entered Unit 5, the last one we need to cover. A magical realm full of praeteritum, infinitives, compound sentences, and outdated real life examples. Just 28 exercises left.

She's working on the speaking skills about announced exam topics with the other tutor. It seems to go quite well. We'll also profit from the time we've got left to do the boring drills in the green monster exercise book (as many as possible), it is really excellent (but yes, a bit of a torture).

TA is really funny. We were mocking the smoking and tv watching texts a million times already. Well, we've just done an exercise half of which was on that. 7 sentences on smoking, 6 on tv watching :-D It's an otherwise great exercise, new in TA 2, which drills all the verb features. And the outdated content provides new sources of amusement in every unit. Unit 4 was about family, 20 years ago.

We sometimes hate each other, it is really a sort of submarine environment, but I have hope it will end with success (and then we won't have to see each other for some time, which will be very healthy). We are not far away from the end. The first phase of her exam is in three days (yes, now it has two phases, the second of which was postponed. Nope, my sister didn't appreciate the change, caused by a stupid teacher misunderstanding a question. The suffering gets prolonged). The second part is next week.

A plot twist: Yesterday, the teacher mocked the rest of the class after a not too well completed homework like "this is really not appropriate for students in this year. Next year, the only one left here with me will be X!" , X being my sister. And today like "be ashamed, X has been learning for such a short time and knows more than you". On one hand, it's very encouraging for my sister (and I'm glad about that!!!). But really, I feel bad for the other students too, being shamed and humiliated all the time. But my sister still risks being shamed, mocked, or humiliated during the exam or classes. The teacher thinks that being mean is the same thing as making the student stronger. Nope, sometimes you are just giving the last blow to a person at the end of their strength, who already has many more serious troubles than a grade.

But it looks like we are on the best way to prove that she's been totally wrong the whole time (of course). And I love that.
9 x

Cavesa
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Re: Back to the roots and water them with coffee

Postby Cavesa » Fri Sep 24, 2021 10:18 am

NEWS! It's working!

In the past days, we completed unit 5 of TA2 Arbeitsbuch. It was so slow, we were so inefficient (especially compared to the first weeks), our brains were slower and slower. You know that Simpsons' moment with a monkey playing cymbals in Homer's head? We passed that phase, straight into the white noise phase. But we endured. We had a few conflicts, but that happens.

We were then reviewing some stuff (the adjective's declination is a bitch). And I gave her another exercise on the verbs yesterday (the kind I love, with reusing every example in half a dozen tenses and modes). She did ok. So, I told her the surprise truth: "hey, that was a unit 7 exercise! congrats!" :-D

Even the school has changed a bit. The German teacher told the class something like "hmm, now I feel bad about making X take the failure exam, because she is better at this than all of you!", which is again a thing that isn't too healthy. But we take it as a useful ego boost. Btw has nobody ever noticed that a class of teens is a sort of social inferno ready to burn at any moment by default? There is no need for teachers to pour oil into it by creating absolutely false and pathological competition. Some competition can be good, using egos and pride to make people work harder, that can be excellent. But this is not the way. And this teacher is not the only one doing this.

Today, X had the first part of the exam, a sort of preliminary round with only one teacher. Basically an attempt to see, how my sister is doing, etc. And also to convince the teacher to finally start fighting for her against the two evil ones. (I guess the teacher had accepted this rather as an attempt to make the expected failure less harsh and to convince the parents to just leave peacefully. But nope, that's not happening :-D )

She passed it. Now she waits for the final round in a few days. She did well, even though not perfect (but nobody wanted perfection!). She could speak and use what she's learnt, both together and with the secondary tutor as well (I'll have more info later). She dealt with the mistakes too, from what I hear, trying to correct, to not panic, to give at least a part of the answer, or to go around the problem! That's perfect as far as I am concerned!

The teacher had a hard time believing it. Welcome to the century of independent learners, lady! And of course I was right. I TOLD YOU SO!!!

Her major "worries" or criticisms (setting aside the totally apropriate language corrections of the mistakes) were pretty nonsensical or more about the teacher than the student. Like "after such a fast progress, the knowledge cannot be so deep rooted". Thanks, Captain Obvious. But the grade is for the performance now, not for "deep roots", those will have to grow later. Plus your other students have been showing no deep roots either lately, the two months of holidays took care of that :-D And it is not fair to relativise this success by making a quality (=speed) seem like a fault. And the teacher also criticised a sort of shyness and difficulty to speak with enough clearness and confidence. No shit, Sherlock! She's a teen with a bit shy nature, who has lived a lot of stressful situations lately, and whom you and your crones have been scaring shell-less (to use a beautiful phrase from the WoW)!

In the remaining days till the main part of the exam, we'll review, we'll do the hyperuseful exercises from the Green Swine Exercisebook, and so on. The key is to not let the structure fall apart, and to treat every new problem, caused mostly by the various new bits of knowledge poking in the old ones.
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Cavesa
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Re: Back to the roots and water them with coffee

Postby Cavesa » Fri Sep 24, 2021 10:52 am

Two posts in a row, there is simply a lot I would like to share. And my log is a good place to vent these thoughts, even though they won't ever reach any world changing mind :-D :-D :-D

Looking at my post and some of the terminology, I realize one thing. I am really not a typically "positive" or "optimistic" or even "nice" person, I don't hesitate to use strong words, etc. However, it serves extremely well sometimes and it was a big part of this success. The point is to never humiliate the student but to "offend" the language, book, situation,etc. It really helps and it takes away a part of the emotional struggle.

Why do I think it is important or useful? Our society is too obsessed with toxic positivity. In language learning (but also in education in general, if you watch the public discussions in various countries, including mine), we expect the kids (but people in general in other situations) to be intrinsically motivated for everything, to be interested in everything, etc. We demand it from them! That would be possible only on cocaine. It's not normal.

Don't get me wrong, supporting a nice relationship to knowledge and to the school subjects is indeed important. The problem is insisting on it. And basically throwing on the student not only the weight of having to learn the subject, but also a moral obligation to love the subject. Why do we expect this emotional work? I think it is ageism, a sort of disrespect towards young people and kids, and a sort of dismissing their real feelings or their validity. And another part is the unfortunate trend in our society, where HR expects a heart warming motivation letter even for a job of a toilet cleaner. That's why vast majority of tutors has mostly "I will make you love the language" messages in their profiles, not "I will make you succeed and here is a list of previous successes". And why so many simply fail, when intensive learning is needed.

Just let people hate some subjects and succeed in spite of that. Life is about that too. Turn the struggle into an epic fight against the dragon, don't force people to perceive the dragon as a cute fluffy puppy. In their eyes, it still has scales and breaths fire.
........

Also, I may continue with German. Taking my own advice and considering some career choices etc. I can fight this dragon too. I happened to accidentally learn the first half of TA2, while teaching it :-D :-D :-D and this all might have been the hardest part of German. Now I might "just" take it all the way to Goethe Zertifikat C1.With perhaps some lower levels on the way there.

I also want my other languages, especially Italian could be professionally useful.

To keep myself sane, I've been watching Netflix in my target languages.
90 episodes of How to get away with murder (Le Regole del Delitto Perfetto) in Italian, each approximately 40 minutes long
A movie RIPD-Rest in Peace Department in Spanish, 90 minutes.
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