[etni] Re: etni Digest V7 #68

That, Batya, is the root of the problem.
Israeli pupils, on the whole do not read books, let alone 
write creative tasks based on them in their own Mother 
Tongue. They do not write essays until they are 
taught "Chibbur" as a bagrut subject in the 11th grade 
rather than as a tool in the 5th grade. I have seen my own 
kids being taught to write "papers" by using computers 
(basically copy and paste) whilst not being taught to write 
a coherent sentences and join them up into a paragraph. 
Give most of the kids a G-style  module text and questions 
in Hebrew and they would have difficulty answering it. Very 
often the unseen text presuppose general knowledge that they 
simply don't possess, not to mention thinking skills.

We English teachers tend to see ourselves as saviours of the 
system, hence the projects, the literature model, book 
reports etc.

I have been involved in writing English-teaching materials 
for a European country in which the the teacher's job  is 
purely seen as teaching English as a foreign language and 
nothing more. I'm not too sure whether I would be happier 
doing just that but it would solve a helluva lot of problems.
David Graniewitz
Jerusalem  


Date:   Tue 10 Mar 21:58:37 IST 2009
From:   Batya <shilohmuse@xxxxxxxxx>  Add to Contacts   | 
This is Spam 
Subject:   [etni] Re: etni Digest V7 #68 
To:   etni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 

I'm out of the classroom now and happy about it.  But I'm 
having a tougher time leaving ETNI.  All this talk about how 
to teach literature, now that it is returning to the Bagrut, 
reminds me of how frustrated I was teaching. 
When I taught a 4 point class, and they kept ignoring 
assignments to write compositions, I was furious.  Then I 
discovered that the kids hadn't been taught in Hebrew.  And 
when they had to find the main idea of a paragraph and 
summarize, they didn't know what I  was talking about.  And 
when I asked seniors what part of the sentence, which type 
of words, showed "time," past prestent future, it was beyond 
them.  And if I had a shekel for every kid who claimed tha 
there was no "passive" in Hebrew... 
Too many Israeli kids don't have a minimal knowledge of 
basic language skills in Hebrew, and I'm not talking about 
olim.  It's not the job of the English teacher to teach 
basic language skills.  Get into the Hebrew system, work on 
the school curriculum.  Get involved with the unions etc. 
Once the kids know it in Hebrew, they'll be able to transfer 
the skills to English, but it doesn't work the other way. 
Batya 
Shiloh Musings 
me-ander The Eye of the Storm the muse's pics Blog Free! 
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