From Utah, a girl – sparkling four percenter – joined my French 1 class about two weeks ago. She had an A in her former school and, since we have been on a Susan Gross type of reading jag lately, had an A with me as well – she reads well.
But each time that we took a spin into L2, I noticed that the window shades immediately rolled down over her eyes. Today, before class, she told me that she was signing up for French 1 again next year. That she couldn’t understand a word.
I told her that I knew that, and said very kindly that none of it was her fault and that she could do French 2 next year (I won’t be the teacher) and that I would slow down for the rest of the year. But, with two weeks left, it ain’t gonna happen.
Then, today, a girl from Holland moving to Denver was shadowing in my level 2 class and we talked a bit with the class to find out about Europe and all that. . She told us that she was taking French 2 in her country.
Our welcome visit concluded, I then launched into some PQA – I was in a big time PQA mood today – and could soon see that this child also was lost.
I’ve only encountered that feeling of being lost in a language class once, when I couldn’t get to the first two days of a Linda Li week of Mandarin here in Denver a few summers ago. It’s a pretty bad feeling.
But just imagine how it must feel for the kids above, both really smart and eager kids. To follow up on some discussion here earlier today, both kids would most likely test out fine with the instruments that most of us now have in place.
But they know the deal.
The Problem with CI
Jeffrey Sachs was asked what the difference between people in Norway and in the U.S. was. He responded that people in Norway are happy and
