[etni] meitzav and dictionaries
- From: sommer ben <sommerbtch@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: etni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 20 May 2007 06:01:25 +0100 (BST)
I must agree with Rachel. This year I have been teaching a weak het, who
arrived in our school last year with extremely small vocabulary in English.
Their vocabulary is still sadly lacking, and I have been teaching them this
year by supplying vocabulary for the texts we must learn, so that they can then
work with those texts, working to cope with the sentences put together from
that same vocabulary,and so forth.
To force them to do the Meitzav, without a dictionary, simply rubs their
faces in the fact that they do not have sufficient vocabulary to do it - and
must make them feel inadequate and resentful. This is not helpful.
Generally, today I find far too many children arriving in seventh grade with
the most appalling lack of vocabulary in English. These gaps in knowledge must
take years to close, since, as we all know, students cannot learn fifty or a
hundred vocabulary words in a week. If I proceed at the reasonable and
recommended pace of 10 or seven words a lesson, at two ( two lesson) meetings a
week, we will never catch up.
I presume that the state in which the children arrive is the result of years
of consistent budget cutting in the primary system. This means that much of our
work in the high school is becoming an attempt to close large gaps that should
never have been there in the first place, often dealing with children rightly
resentful at their lack of success so far.
Sometimes this gets a trifle discouraging.
Ben Sommer
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