Friday we had our first parent-teacher conference with J's kindergarten teacher. One thing in particular struck me as relevant to L2. His teacher praised J's ability to use his imagination with stories they read in class. He's apparently very good at things like thinking up further episodes in a story, further characters, and alternative scenarios to what the characters do.
I have deliberately worked on the mechanics of this latter skill over the years, primarily in the form of conditional propositions ("If the character had [not] done this, then this would [not] have happened") not least in order to train the subjunctive 2, which in German involves special verb forms. Posts on that are here, here, and here, but I did it (and still do it!) much more than just these times.
The teacher's comments reflect another, larger concern I have had as a teacher and scholar of literature: the idea of all stories as constructed and contingent, subject to endless variation and alternatives. I first talked about that here on this blog. It was very gratifying for me to hear that all this is actually having an effect on how J relates to the world through language, story, and communication with others.
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