L2 Writing 4

For the first time in nearly two years (see here, here, and here for earlier posts), I have begun to work with J systematically on writing in German. The reason for the long hiatus is simply that I have not wanted to burden him with additional regular homework—beyond all the extra reading and audiobook listening we continue to do every day. Writing also does not come terribly easily to J, as it doesn't to most children (one reason being that handwriting seems to be a rather a low priority in school these days). He complains a lot when he has to do it. He can write very beautifully when he wants to, but he usually doesn't, so normally he's very sloppy.

When we were on vacation earlier this summer, we asked J to keep a "journal" consisting of two sentences per day about his activities, one in English and one in German. That did not go so well; he mostly wrote about how he hated writing: 

H also frequently writes letters backwards, forms many of them from the bottom up, and writes all over the page. So in addition to specifically German things, we're also working on remedial handwriting mechanics. My hope is that if he can get to writing letters more easily and regularly, and texts that look better visually, he will start to enjoy writing more and want to do it more. 

I'm experimenting with various sorts of exercises and seeing what works. Right now we're doing three main sorts of activities simultaneously:

1) working on individual letters and letter combinations, and individual words that contain the targeted letters. Right now it's a, along with ie and ei, probably the most frequently confused common letter combination in German (and all of which J forms inefficiently, from the bottom up, which I'm correcting). I make J write out lines of the letters, and then words with the letters:

2) Copying sentences, passages, and paragraphs of exemplary writing and stuff J likes. Here the inspiration is Bach, who learned composition by copying the works of other composers note-by-note. J started with a passage from Tolkien's The Hobbit, which we've been reading together in English but which I have in German. I made him copy it over and over again until it was error -free and looked good on the page. It took nine repetitions, and a great deal of complaining. Note the illustrations: 

3) Dictation. This is very old-school, but J actually seems to like it, perhaps because it played a role in a story we listened to recently, Das fliegende Klassenzimmer by Erich Kästner. I started off dictating individual words and phrases tied into other activities:

But this morning I hit upon something that worked very well. Last night I read J a poem ("Der Sack und die Mäuse") by Wilhelm Busch that he really liked, and he was game for copying it out via my dictation during the next several days. Here is the text I'm reading from:

And here the result of this morning's dictation:

It wasn't yet "pure" dictation; I helped him with spelling as he wrote. But one thing at a time. Hopefully he will continue to enjoy this. That is the key.