[etni] Fw: Sara Cove's letter

----- Original Message ----- 
From: byk - byk@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Sara Cove's letter

I have been mulling over Sara Cove's letter,  in which she reacts to English 
teachers' claims that we have to teach what hasn't been taught in L1.

She says that all the reading strategies, sentence structure, writing, etc. 
are taught in elementary school, and she blames the syndrome of "the 
teachers in the year below didn't do their job" excuse.

Sara, I believe this is a cop out.  I teach many pupils who spent their 
early schooling years in the States and other English speaking countries. 
Many were back here already, by sixth grade.  Without exception, and 
unrelated to intelligence, they are all able to write a well-structured 
composition, are aware of parts of  speech, different types of sentences, 
how to reasearch the internet without once using copy/paste, how to 
summarize, and so on.  Furthermore, their general knowledge is good, and, 
whether they are natural readers or not, they have been 'brainwashed' to 
read at least one book a month.  Needless to say, all these skills are 
carried over to Hebrew.

Why are the things you teach not producing the same results?  One answer is 
very simple; none of these pupils studied in classes of more than 20 pupils. 
Can elementary school teachers take home notebooks  every day with clesses 
of 38 pupils?  The other answer is disciipline in the classroom and the 
school.  One of my pupils, recently returned from a two-year stay abroad, is 
so horrified by the zoo-like atmosphere in his school (right here in the 
wealthy centre of the country), that he is looking to transfer to a school 
for the intellectually gifted.

Do not blame the homes; I teach these pupils and they are all polite, 
well-behaved children out of school.  Do not blame the teachers.  I hate 
hearing the comment "The teacher can't control the class".  What are they? 
Animals in a circus who need to be "controlled.  Obviously, there is 
something seriously wrong with the system, and this letter is not the place 
to go into it.  But it is certainly time that the English teachers stop 
trying to make up for the system's lacks ,all by themselves, and for far too 
little money.

A very concrete example of a f----- up system.  Passive is usually taught in 
the 8th grade in English, but only in the 9th grade in Hebrew!!!

Jennifer Byk



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