I always hear moms and dads talking about how early or late their kids walked and talked. I know it’s really exciting. I’ve “walked” with a lot of my friends’ kids and I loved seeing them take their first steps.

But nobody can beat Berek. He started walking at 6 months. That’s right, he was walking at 6 months by himself and never stopped. When he started talking at a year old, it was in full, grammatical sentences. There was no baby talk, no broken English. He was such a bright baby. And now, look at him.

<sigh> He made more sense back then.

And it shall be … that he shall write him a copy of this law in a book out of that which is before the priests the Levites: and it shall be with him, and he shall read therein all the days of his life:

1. that he may learn to fear the LORD his God, to keep all the words of this law and these statutes, to do them:
2. that his heart be not lifted up above his brethren,
3. and that he turn not aside from the commandment, to the right hand, or to the left:
4. to the end that he may prolong his days in his kingdom, he, and his children, in the midst of Israel.

Deuteronomy 17:18-20

One of “my” little girls is copying out the book of Genesis in English every day. Some other church kids are doing the same thing in Japanese.

Someday, I’d like to have some of the kids copy the Pentateuch (or maybe just Genesis) in Hebrew … after they copy it out in Japanese and English, of course. Then, we’ll read portions of it every day before class, each child with his own hand-written copy. Ideally, writing out the Pentateuch would be part of a Biblical curriculum.

Went to a dental hospital today. After 3 hours of waiting, checking, x-rays, more checking, and more waiting, I finally got an appointment to have 2 of my wisdom teeth pulled on March 4. My appointed dentist is a really cute little thing. I felt massive beside her, head and shoulders taller, and at least twice as heavy. She looked like she was about 18. It’d be fun to see her next to Calvin. LOL. As we were talking, I couldn’t bear it anymore and asked her how old she was. She laughed and said, “I’m 30. I know I don’t look it. It’s nice when I’m out and people think I look young. But as a doctor, I lose credibility. It’s a big handicap for me. Don’t worry. I’ve done this lots of times. You’ll be OK with me.”

I was told that all 4 of my wisdom teeth would be hard to pull out. The upper right one is growing behind my molar. It’s stuck there and they’re not sure how to get it out. The upper left one is growing in at an bad angle. The lower two wisdom teeth are stuck in bone. I’m trying to look on the bright side and be thankful. All my other teeth are just fine and dandy.

Because all four teeth are going to be difficult to pull, the cute little dentist recommended I have one pulled at a time, but I told her I couldn’t bear the thought of going FOUR times, so they’re going to come out two at a time. Fun, fun, fun … argh. If you never see me again, you’ll know why.

i_like_elves: Are you STILL talking to Rachel?
Parataxic: Yes.
Parataxic: I love her.
i_like_elves: me too
i_like_elves: she’s mine
i_like_elves: you can’t have her
i_like_elves: did you see her latest post on her blog?
i_like_elves: it’s appalling
i_like_elves: the one about you i mean

There are some words I’m wildly in love with … like parataxis. I haven’t been able to get over that one yet. I just fell in love with another one today: epigon.

What’s with Reformed guys these days? Or is it just postmil bloggers?

SP-Jon is bloggin’ about shoes. Before that, he was bloggin’ about hair. He knows more about shampoo and conditioner than any of the girls I know. Tim’s gone and dyed his hair.

Now, what’re postmil blogger girls s’pose to do?

Rick’s Chick: That’s really nice!
Rick’s Chick: I love the star… works in perfectly with the name.
Parataxic: Tell Tim that.
Parataxic: I just told him it looked old-newspaperish. LOL

Parataxic: What kind of handle is that.
Squeaky Cheese Flowers: Lynne and I made it up
Parataxic: Up where?
Squeaky Cheese Flowers: I don’t remember
Squeaky Cheese Flowers: We were discussing how we liked the sound of “squeaky cheese”
Squeaky Cheese Flowers: we figured a good name for a band would be the Squeaky Cheese Flowers

Would you rather have a nice dream or a horrid one? Usually, it doesn’t make any difference to me because I never remember my dreams anyway. For the last 14 years or so, I’ve had dream amnesia and could only remember two or three dreams a year. Almost always, they were nightmares. The two weeks before I left for Moscow, I woke up over and over again with beautiful dreams. It was awful. I would get depressed just remembering them. LOL. I would much rather have nightmares. After coming home from Moscow, I’ve had beautiful dreams almost every night, and it’s killing me.

Good dreams hurt because I know they will never happen. Bad dreams are a relief because I know they will never happen.

Now that everything in my life is back to the way it has been for the last few years, reading, studying, and spending a lot of my time teaching my friends’ children, the week I spent in Moscow is fading into a dreamlike quality. It doesn’t seem real that we actually spent all that time together. As I look through the pictures again, it just doesn’t seem real. And it hurts.

Maybe I’m not being thankful enough. Or maybe I’m just going through withdrawal.

Um, OK. This post isn’t actually about the classical vs. Hebraic mindset. I’ll blog it about some other time.

I teach a lot of kids, and after I quit my main job last year, most of them now are home school kids from my church. There is one class, though, that is special … elite. They are called “The 6“. They study harder and do better than anyone else. One of them has only been studying English for about one year. One year!! Last year, he didn’t know the alphabet or phonics or anything, and this spring he’ll be ready with the rest of the class to start reading Jordan and Leithart.

Anyway, during the first class I had with The 6 after I got back, I told them I would probably be going away for a while to study Hebrew and Greek. I expected the kids’ reactions to be something like, “Oh, yay, we won’t have to study so much,” or “Hurray for less homework,” or “Aww, I’m gonna miss you.” They are still at the ages when children want to play more than anything else (10 to 13). I expected anything but this: “Congratulations!! Please come back and teach it to us!! We want to study Hebrew!!”

In a different class, a beautiful little home school girl I teach, 6 years old, burst out, “You‘re going? I want to go. I want to study Hebrew.”

I love my kids.

I have no idea why I didn’t blog about this much, much earlier. Let’s attribute it to being really sleepy. Rachel and I have articles here. Thanks, Gideon!!

So, here is my first published article.

Noun, verb, gerund, subjunctive, infinitive, future progressive, comparative, superlative, past participle, auxiliary verb. In Japan, children are deluged with such words when they start to study English. No wonder, then, so few people in Japan speak English, even college graduates who have studied it for at least 10 years. In all Asia, only three nations have lower TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) scores than Japan: Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar. Internationally, it ranks fourteenth from the bottom out of 88 countries.

When I am on the train, I often see students holding little books trying to memorize lists of English words. Needless to say, that is no way to learn a language. Many Japanese have memorized thousands of words and the first dictionary definition of each word. Many have a better knowledge of grammar than most Americans, but all to no avail. When they speak, their sentences are often a string of words in an incomprehensible order. Typically, Japanese schools force-feed innumerable rules of grammar and list after list of words, but do not teach how to interrelate and communicate words or ideas. (See www.engrish.com for examples of the kind of English used all over Japan.)

One of the most difficult things when teaching English, even to small children, is to break through cultural barriers and thinking habits. Teaching English in Japan is as much about showing students a new worldview as it is about the language itself. In this rigidly hierarchical society, the relationship between a teacher and a student, as with all other relationships, has strictly defined boundaries. Though that is not something wrong in itself, it does not work when trying to teach a language, especially to children.

I have been tutoring and teaching English for the past eight years in homes and private English schools. Though I have been teaching adults, too, most of my students have been children. When I teach, I try to gain the children’s trust and friendship. I try to be a friend or sister while I teach. Most children come to understand and enjoy this less formal relationship, but some are not able to handle such familiarity and quit my classes.

When children first start coming to class, we do a lot of chanting, clapping, and singing so they can learn words and sentences in rhythm without consciously trying to commit anything to memory. Once my students get to the point of being able to speak some English, I simply keep correcting their mistakes as they speak with very little or no explanation, as a mother does with her own children.

Using correct grammar should be an unconscious habit, like breathing. I do not want my students to have to think about or struggle with grammar. I want them to be able to think and feel in English before they worry about terms and rules.

The pictures that words draw look different in each language, even when saying the same thing. Just as each country has its own music and art, each language has its own rhythm and shades of meaning.

Children do not need to know any grammatical terms to be able to speak a language. When mothers teach their babies how to speak, they do not use any terminology.

What I do explain carefully and correct meticulously are phonics, spelling, punctuation, and handwriting, but, like grammar, I try to help them learn to write correctly by sheer force of habit. When children turn in homework with mistaken punctuation or with handwriting that is anything less than their very best, they know I will make them correct every mistake. The passing score for every page of homework is 100 per cent. Anything less is not acceptable. (This is something I learned from my mother.)

Phonics is easier to understand than English grammar. If children learn the 26 letters of the alphabet, about 50 letter combinations, and about 25 spelling rules, they should be able to read and spell more than 95 per cent of English words. It is simple compared to the two Japanese alphabets, which are 50 characters each, and the 2,000 standard written characters almost all of which can be read in several ways.

I usually allow my students to decide how much homework they are going to do. I recommend a certain amount, but if they want more or less, it is up to them. However much they decide to do, I hold them to their commitment. Of course, there are always children that refuse to do any and I have to assign them work, but my goal is to make children so eager about studying that they beg for homework. Most of the time, this works, and I have to hold them back from doing too much.