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.

Wrinkle in Time

J's teacher has started reading Madelein L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time to the class, which we read as a family last fall. He told me that he helped his teacher pronounce the German quotes in the book. When I asked him if her remembered what they were, he rattled off:

Auf frischer Tat ertappt

Das Werk lobt den Meister. 

"Document" films

One of the special things J and I do together, usually when we are on our own in the house, is watch documentaries in German (Dokumentarfilme). In English J calls them "document" films. 

Often we combine this with dinner. Here is one of J's favorite experiences, a document film combined with FzA ("Frühstück zum Abendessen"):

Here are several of the document films we've watched in the last couple months:

1) The ancient Celts (3 parts)

2) The ancient Greeks 

3) The ancient Romans

4) Neil Armstrong

5) Apollo 13 (2 parts)

6) Nanotechnology

7) Octopuses

8) Flying dinosaurs

9) Virgin Galactic and space tourism (one of several) 

 

Comparing translations

J has a few books in both German and English. Today he spent a couple of hours reading and comparing  these stories:

 

When I asked him if one was more difficult than the other, he told me no, he can read just as easily in German as in English. I think that can hardly really be the case, given how much time he spends working on English in school. But at home, in any case, he seems to spend about as much time reading his German as his English books. For example, he'll spend several days reading nothing but Calvin & Hobbs, but then the same thing with Asterix & Obelix the next week.   

Idiomatic German word order

J produced a wonderful sentence the other day, with characteristic idiomatic word order. We were talking about some conflict he was having with somebody during recess, and he said: 

"Der Streit ist jetzt vorbei, richtig aufgelöst hat sich das Problem aber nicht."

Furzkisten

When I was a boy, I loved reading the dictionary and language reference books. So now I've started to read J dictionary and thesaurus entries. In order to make it fun, we've started with the kinds of terms J especially enjoys at this point in his life:

  
When we came across "Furzkiste," we laughed like loons for about two minutes.

Das fliegende Klassenzimmer

J enjoyed Emil und die Detektive so much, we started right in on this:

He was especially excited about the idea of a battle between two schools, being himself very interested at the moment in war-games (capture the flag, nerf gun fights), teams, and plans of attack etc. On this level the story does not disappoint. It is very rich in many other ways as well. One thing we talked about today was the friendship between Martin/Matz, the leader of the boys from boarding school, who is very tall and strong and self-confident, and Ulli, a very intelligent, but small and fretful boy. They are called "die ungleichen Freunde." We paused in our listening this morning to discuss different types of friendships one might have, some with people who are similar to one and because of the things in common, and some based on differences.