[etni] futile
- From: Yisrael and Batya Medad <ybmedad@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: ETNI <etni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 21 Apr 2004 08:16:37 +0200
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I've been writing less to etni, because I'm getting very
depressed/pessimistic over our chances of teaching a decent level of
English to Israeli youth of today. My problem isn't with the English;
it's with the level of Hebrew grammar learning.
To be very brief, there are two basic aspects of language, fluency and
accuracy. Fluency involves comprehension and confidence, which are in the
realm of possibility for today's students. Ignorance is bliss for them,
because their Hebrew and general grammar are so low that they have no idea
of what they're missing.
Ten years ago, when I was the girls gym teacher in our local elementary
school I got into trouble, because I complained that my students' Hebrew
was bad. The girls claimed that there were "chamisha banot" instead of
"chameish." The michanechet and principal considered this acceptable. Now
this is the generation in high school. Not only are they oblivious to
gender matching in nouns and adjectives in Hebrew, but they don't know
proper sentence structure, nor the "binyanim" in verbs.
Teaching them English grammar is futile, frustrating at best. Once they
pass the lashon bagrut in the 10th grade, their minds empty.
I'm sure that some schools have better success, and I do teach the 3 point
crowd. I feel that our students are being linguistically disabled by the
incompetent teaching methods in their mother tongue.
Chodesh Tov,
Batya
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