It has been nearly a year since I last posted. The demands of department headship have made it difficult to continue to find the time for all my L2 routines with J, much less for writing about them! But I'm going to make more of an effort again.
Exactly one year ago, I wrote a post about how my major L2 acquisition goals had been met, as J was now reading German books independently. He has continued to do so. He is now reading German and English books at the same level. Here he is from yesterday reading a book in one of his favorite new series, Ute Krause's Muskeltiere:
This is a real chapter-book:
Using the very nice index of age-appropriateness at the Oetinger Verlag, this book seems to be at the 8-9 year old reading level. Which is perfect; J turns 8 in a month.
Now, over the past year, a decent amount of bedtime reading time with J has been him reading to me. About 5-10 minutes out of 20. And he had been making good progress. Up until about 2 months ago, however, I felt that his German reading level was still measurably behind his English, to judge by what I heard when he read to K.
Since then, the gap has closed. That has a lot to do with a trip to Austria we took in September, about which more later. Since then, he has been doing a lot more independent reading in German. We bought a lot of books while we were in Vienna.
Up until about a month ago, I was still a little skeptical about how much he was actually understanding of these longer, more complicated stories. I knew he was getting the main plot points and even a lot more. But I doubted he was understanding everything, or more or less everything.
But he was. That has been borne in on me with the last Muskeltiere book. After he read it, we stared listening to the audiobook. To test him, I asked him on several occasions to describe what happened in an scene before we listened to it. Without exception, he described in considerable detail, and it was all exactly as he said.
J has been having some trouble distinguishing ei from ie vowel combinations. We've gone over this numerous times. Today I started using an old strategy again, which is to have the puppets make mistakes (in this case pronounce incorrectly), eliciting correction from J. It seems to help. He loves correcting!
He's also been all about Friedel and Thusnelda again in the last several days, after Gustav has been at center stage for so long. I still love doing the piggies, though I must confess it took me awhile to get back into character.
As I've mentioned before, I haven't been pushing L2 reading with J, figuring he has enough on his plate at school. He does some on his own. Today he wanted to read through a mouse book with Ulli and Sabine. I suggested they read a page, which idea J liked very much. His reading was very good. I had the mice read more slowly and make some errors, which he proceeded to correct:
Häusen > Häuser
Dorfen > Dörfer
beschnuppen > beschnuppern
9.1 neu
9.2 neun
9.3 das Heu
9.4 heute
9.5 die Leute, die Leuten
9.6 die Beule, Beulen
9.7 die Eule, Eulen
8.1 aus
8.2 Maus, Mäuse
8.3 Haus, Häuser
8.4 Laus, Läuse
8.5 Baum, Bäume
8.6 Raum, Räume
8.7 Traum, Träume
7.1 ein
7.2 kein
7.3 nein
7.4 mein
7.5 dein
7.6 sein
7.7 fein
6.1 geben
6.2 neben
6.3 heben
6.4 weben
6.5 beben
6.6 leben
6.7 kleben
5.1 ich
5.2 lieben
5.3 lieblich
5.4 dich
5.5 sich
5.6 schieben
5.7 der Dieb, Diebe
somehow I got off track on this one and it ended up like this:
5.1 ich
5.2 mich
5.3 lieben
5.4 sieben
5.5 dich
5.6 sich
5.7 der Dieb, Diebe
It didn't work out too well to mix vowel combinations.
4.1 du
4.2 zu
4.3 gut
4.4 der Mut
4.5 mutig
4.6 die Wut
4.7 der Schuh, die Schuhe
I've also been including quick practice word lists, phrases, and sentences in the daily exercise to review the material covered.
ist
bist
ist
Mist!
Der Hund ist listig.
Die Schlange ist listig.
die
sie
sie
die
Sie ist listig.
Wie ist der Hund?
Wie ist das Land?
Wie ist Hund-Land?
dies
sie
sie
die
wie
sie
wie
die
dies
dies
die
wie
sie
dies
mies
dies
die
wie
sie
mies
fies
mies
fies
dies
wie
Der Hund ist fies und mies.
fiese Hunde?
liebe Hunde?
lieb
fies
mies
dies
lieb
sie
Du bist listig!
Du bist Mist!
Das ist Mist!
du
zu
zu
du
sie
die
wie
du
zu
sie
zu
gut
gut
du
die
du
die
die
sie
gut
zu
Hör gut zu!
Mut
gut
gut
Mut
du
zu
Mut
sie
Here is the prospective list for week 3.
3.1 die
3.2 sie
3.3 wie
3.4 dies
3.5 fies
3.6 mies
3.7 lieb
The first week went very well. We did some review at the end and J got them all right, though of course—as a little bit of randomized flash card work revealed—that was mostly because he had the words memorized in short order. Which is fine.
Here's week 2.
2.1 ist
2.2 bist
2.3 der Mist
2.4 die Kiste, die Kisten
2.5 die Liste, die Listen
2.6 die List, die Listen
2.7 listig
The latter half of this group is calculated to lead to the last word, which is an important one for a snake-friendly household. The snakes gathered as J did the honors:
Already more than two years ago I got it into my head that I could start teaching J to read. That was a mistake, as I write about in my article. But now he is quite ready and willing. He has long since learned all his letters (upper-case very well, lower-case less so) and is just beginning to sound words out of his own accord.
I'm going to begin by adopting a very simple but elegant and low-stress technique suggested by a colleague of mine and fellow German-kiddie-playgroup dad, Jeremy Reynolds. Every morning at breakfast he gives his children a piece of paper with a German word on it, and they try to sound it out.
I'm going to modify this slightly. If the word is a noun, then in the morning I'm going to write the singular form, and in the evening add the plural form (articles included). If it's a verb, then the infinitive comes in the morning, the past participle in the evening. Also, after J sounds the word out, he will write it down on the card, and I will leave a blank card after each word in anticipation of a later stage when he will practice writing the word after having seen it but while not currently looking right at it.
I got a index card notebook for the purpose,
5 X 8 so there's enough room for singular and plural forms of longer words and space for J to write them.
The first word of the day is der Hund. Here's the morning exercise:
J was able to sound it out independently, but probably partly or mostly because he knew since last night what the word was going to be. I think I'll do this for awhile, then stop telling him ahead of time.
Here's the evening excercise:
(At this point he was about to drop, exhausted from a birthday party in an indoor jungle room!)
I'll do these entries by week. As for the choice of words, I'm just going to start simple and follow my nose, keeping some letters and letter combinations constant while changing others.
1.1 der Hund, die Hunde
1.2 die Hand, die Hände
1.3 der Mund, die Münder
1.4 das Band, die Bänder
1.5 das Land, die Länder
1.6 der Sand, die Sande
1.7 die Wand, die Wände
