[etni] Fw: Language skills

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Sarah Cove" <sarahc@xxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Language skills


After reading the new thread about how little the high school pupils know 
about their own language, I felt extremely frustrated.  While I agree that 
few L1 teachers actually teach their students such basics as reading 
strategies, text format and structure, dictionary use, etc, I find it 
upsetting that so many high school teachers find their pupils have so little 
basic ability in structuring a sentence or a paragraph or finding the main 
idea of a text.  Why?  Because we elementary school teachers have been 
teaching and working on that for years!  While I no longer physically teach 
in the classroom, I do give in-service courses for elementary school 
teachers, and what we work on is how to teach reading strategies and how to 
write a sentence.  So why don't the kids know?  I guess for the same reason 
that every September I hear homeroom teachers complaining that the new kids 
coming into the class have no study habits and I hear the last-year's 
homeroom teacher complaining that th
e kids she had were so much better than the new class.

I guess it is like the old story how university professors complain that the 
high school teachers didn't do their job who complain about the jr. high 
teachers who complain about the elementary school teachers who complain 
about the kindergarten teachers who complain about the parents.  Finally, 
the father says "He isn't even my kid!"

We will continue to teach and the kids will continue not to know.
Sarah Cove


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