As we begin our second year of school and I see the children come back from their summer holidays, I am so happy to find that they haven't forgotten all of their English! In fact, with many of the students I am seeing a new stage of English.
The first stage, as I see it, is understanding what a different language is. Many children come to school never having interacted with someone who spoke another language. They don't quite know what to make of me! I can see on their faces, "Is she crazy? Is she stupid? What's wrong with her?" but they quickly understand that I'm just speaking another language. In the second stage, the children are a bit like parrots. They listen to what I am saying, and say it back to me. They learn the different options to answer questions like yes and no, good and bad. During this phase, they are little sponges, absorbing all of the English they hear and saving it for later. Many of our students are now entering a third phase of language development. They are putting together the words they know to express themselves. Instead of being passive and answering questions, they are now asking them! Of course, their questions are far from perfect, but I can often understand what they are asking and help them to phrase it better. A few weeks ago, one student asked, "Truck down?" while pointing at a truck on a shelf. This week, another student asked me, "Is tunnel? Nooo! Help, please?" which meant, "Can you help me make a tunnel?" I've also started to hear, "To house, yes?" for "Can I take this home?" I can't express with words how excited it makes me to hear them putting together their own thoughts. Maybe, one of them would say, "English is good? Yesssss!"
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