Relative clauses

This morning during our library chat, J was killing the relative clauses. While describing the various tests he accomplished in a videogame this morning, these kinds of sentences were veritably streaming out of him: 

Ich habe alles geholt, was ich holen musste.
Ich glaube, das war der erste Test, den ich geschafft habe. 

I was especially excited about that masculine accusative singular relative pronoun, especially in combination with subordinating word order. There were 3-4 examples of this. I don't believe I heard a single error in basic grammar and syntax. 

By the way, the videogame was "School of Dragons," based on the movie How to Train Your Dragon.

In his description this morning, J was also using a lot of terminology from this book we have just acquired and been reading. 

So today was a very good example of how books + videogames can be used to leverage a lot of active L2 production. I've just ordered a large German World of Warcraft book in order to better be able to do this with that game.  

New books!

These arrived in the mail yesterday. J was super excited and sat down with them right away.

Daily conversation time

For the last five months, on the four days per week that I take J to school, we've had a routine where we sit down together in the library for a few minutes (2-5) and have a chat (always in German of course). 

(Thanks to librarian Tanya H. for the photos)

This has become an important part of our L2 routine after the pre-k days when we had one whole day together per week. It is also a lovely bit of quality father-son time. It's one of those many ways in which our L2 relationship, which I, like many people, had initially feared would feel unnatural, has in fact encouraged behaviors and interactions that contribute to the quality of the relationship with my son. If I had never undertaken to speak German with him, would it have occurred to me to set aside a few minutes every day to just chat with him? Maybe. But maybe not!

Initially I would read something like jokes or riddles. In the last couple of months I've stopped doing that and we've just been talking about whatever comes up. Recently it's been World of Warcraft. All I have to do is ask J about his characters and quests and he'll just narrate away.

Another thing I've started doing recently is to have him ask me questions. His task is to think up one good question every morning, about something he doesn't know about me or his mother. The goal here is to encourage him to take an active interest in other people's lives and perspectives, become a good listener and interlocutor. He has good social skills already (L2 may play a role in this), this is just building on that.    

Sunday school 22. Joseph 3.

Reading: Monika und Udo Tworuschka, Die Weltreligionen Kindern erklärt, loc. 1190-1199/2119 Kindle edition (Hinduism). Listening: Die Bibel, 3.19 - 4.07 (Genesis ch. 42-47).

Today we had a long and interesting discussion about what motivated Joseph to put the silver cup into Benjamin's sack and make it look like Benjamin had stolen it. 

We also started talking about Hinduism and had a fairly involved conversation about various conceptions of the afterlife in various religions, including reincarnation. 

2016

Total audio: 18.39

Total video: 3:11

Total gamplay: 3.00

Age 6.06.24

L1/L2 divergence, Part 5

Ever since he's become interested in World of Warcraft, J has been less active with Minecraft. One consequence is that he's not been watching as many "Let's play" videos, which provide exposure to rapid-paced colloquial language. When he does, he's been mostly choosing English-language ones, which has gotten me worried that it's becoming an effort for him to watch German videos for reasons having to do with L1/L2 divergence. 

However, this morning (and in the last couple of days in fact) he chose to watch German videos again: 

Later this morning I asked him about comparative understanding. He's generally quite reluctant to answer such questions and doesn't give what I would call rich responses, but he said that he understands the German videos still about as well as the English-language ones. Maybe that's true, maybe it isn't; he obviously senses my investment in his German-speaking ability and may be telling me what he thinks I want to hear. Still, it's something. He chose to watch the videos, after all, and had a lot to say about them.

begegnen

This morning J, while describing a World of Warcraft incident, told me about "... ein Monster, das ... dem ich begegnet habe." 

He got the auxiliary wrong (as he still not infrequently does with all the verbs with sein), but I was very impressed that he self-corrected the object case. 

L1/L2 divergence, part 4.

There was a disconcerting incident two days ago, the precise nature and significance of which I've been pondering. 

J and I were on one of our audiobook drives in the country, listening to the German version of J.M. Barrie's story Peter Pan, which my wife has been reading in the original to J at bedtime. Suddenly J announced in some distress that he couldn't understand what was going on in the story. He bust into tears and wanted to stop. After a few minutes he calmed down and wanted to resume listening, and thereafter it was business as usual: I could see him paying attention, reacting with facial expressions to what was going on in the story, and seeming to enjoy himself.  

Whenever we read/listen to/watch the same story in both languages, I always ask J questions about how well he understands it comparatively. Up until now he has either said that there is no difference in understanding, or that he understands the German version better. This time, when I asked him, he said that he understands the English version of Peter Pan better.

Now on the one hand, I don't dispute that this is simply true, and it seems to me that the incident is more evidence of the L1/L2 divergence that I have been noticing for the past several months and documenting since early March of this year. 

On the other hand, I think there are some mitigating circumstances, or differences in the circumstances. First, I've noticed in the past that J's level of concentration is greater while listening to an audiobook in the car than while being read to at home. At home, he tends to be playing with something (stuffed animals, toys, flashlight, etc.) while being read to. Consequently, he tends to drift along over passages he doesn't really comprehend without registering the fact with the reader, or else he simply says he does understand when he doesn't. I noticed this with Unten am Fluss several weeks ago, where it took me quite a while to really see that he wasn't understanding large portions of the story. In the car, however, where he is confined to his car seat and where he (intentionally on my part) doesn't usually have things to play with while listening, he concentrates on the story much more. So it's logical that he would also register non-comprehension in that setting.   

Secondly, like Unten am Fluss, Peter Pan is a discursively rather challenging story. My wife has pointed out on numerous occasions that even though it is written for children, in many ways it seems as though an adult audience is being targeted, between the lines so to speak. This is especially the case in ch. 2 (which occasioned the above crisis), where the parents are self-reproachfully recalling the events that led up the the disappearance of the children. 

Thirdly, when my wife reads Peter Pan to J, she reads quite slowly. The audiobook narrative is indeed very fast. 

Lastly, my wife often pauses in her reading to explain words and references to J. I do this while reading, but not often on our audiobook drives, in order not to fumble with the ipod while driving. 

So those are some mitigating factors. Still, I don't doubt that there is some real L1/L2 divergence behind the incident.