Chit Chat in VOLTVILLE Thread #2 :)

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Renolizzie

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Good morning, voltages.

The breeder messaged me that Whiskey is going to have those babies any day now so go ahead and send the deposit and I will be in line for first pick.

We are very excited.

Hubby hurt his knee. I hope he gets over it since he works tomorrow.
 

Uncle

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Uncle

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Good morning, voltages.

The breeder messaged me that Whiskey is going to have those babies any day now so go ahead and send the deposit and I will be in line for first pick.

We are very excited.
OF Course -
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Hubby hurt his knee. I hope he gets over it since he works tomorrow.

"GOOD VIBES" & "Healing Thoughts" are being sent "Hubby's" Way . . .
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Uncle

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Probably normal. Not yet in school, and surrounded by Chinese-speaking family. Minimal motivation. Do they watch TV much? Might be better for all if they turn the closed captioning on TV on.

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AND - Probably would help the whole Family too . . . Just Sayin' . . . ;)
 

Qew

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I wondered if maybe some kind of word games would help the little guy, Sandy. I did a quick google, but it seems hard to find something specifically for English as a second language games. I did come across a site, based in the UK, which might confuse things more, but maybe it can give you some ideas for activities. I don't think you have to join to look at the material. http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/speak-and-spell
 

awsum140

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Sometimes I wonder if, in our rush to be inclusive, we don't actually do a dis-service to various groups. The availability of foreign language TV, newspapers and publications only serves to prolong the "assimilation" process. Living in "clusters" only adds to the problem, especially in more rural environments. There's nothing wrong with other languages, at all, but not learning to be proficient in American English is kind of like a salmon swimming upstream. My maternal Grandmother was fluent in English but simply refused to use it for her "daily" language and spoke only Russian, much to the confusion of us younguns'.
 

3mg Meniere

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Children who are raised in bilingual environments can acquire additional languages much more easily than children raised monolingually.

There is a balance-- if families switch languages too quickly, the kids end up linguistically deprived. Conversely, if the family discourages the children from achieving fluency in the second language, it decreases their chances of becoming successful in the larger society.
 
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awsum140

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I meant more of the traditional language being spoken exclusively at home and only watching TV and reading publications in it at home. That doesn't work to switch languages at all, at least that was my experience. I wish I had learned Russian back then, but being a dumb kid with a skull full of mush, I didn't realize the opportunity I actually had. Ain't hindsight a wonderful thing?
 

Wuzznt Me

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I meant more of the traditional language being spoken exclusively at home and only watching TV and reading publications in it at home. That doesn't work to switch languages at all, at least that was my experience. I wish I had learned Russian back then, but being a dumb kid with a skull full of mush, I didn't realize the opportunity I actually had. Ain't hindsight a wonderful thing?
And always 20/20.
 

SandySu

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The little boy goes to kindergarten, so there, he has to speak English if there aren't other Chinese kids in his class. But even if there are, the teacher will be speaking English. This immersion is much more worthwhile than the half hour 3 times a week I give him.

At home, they speak Chinese and watch Chinese TV. I've suggested to his older brother and sister that they speak English to him, but I doubt that's happening. Once the girl said they could't speak English together because their grandmother doesn't understand it. Whether that would be considered rude or whether she fears they might be plotting mischief, I don't know.

When I started with the girl, she was in 1st grade and spoke more English then than her kindergartner brother does now, but she wasn't very verbal, either. She improved very quickly, though. Now, both older kids speak better English than their parents, and they probably read it better, too. I started with the older boy when he was in 3rd grade, so he knew English well enough, though not at grade level. I think he is still behind about a year. He's now in 5th grade.

His sister is doing better. I started with her in 1st grade, and now she's in 3rd grade doing grade-level work.

And then there's the new girl, in 3rd grade, and when I started, she was reading 1st grade level, though she is very verbal and speaks fluently. She is advancing fast, and since we started in the fall, she is now reading 2nd grade stuff and struggling with help with some easy 3rd grade stuff.

I think with the littlest one, my mistake was to read aloud to him. It's gibberish to him, so he gets bored. I was reading a picture book with just a few words on a page and big, bright pictures, but he did better when I just showed him the pictures and discussed them than me reading the text. I thought he was ready, since I tried it last week with Where the Wild Things Are, and he listened and looked at the pictures. Maybe Monday, he just wasn't feeling so alert. Who knows? He seems interested in learning to write, though. Last time, we had fun with him thinking up words he wanted to know how to write, and I'd spell that word out for him as he wrote it. I thought he'd enjoy having the control of deciding which word he'd write. The last word he thought of was "giraffe." I know he was proud of himself, because I'd show him pictures of animals and things, and he would never remember the word "giraffe." A while ago, I abandoned that, and now he knows the word!

He gets impatient and itchy if I try to work on his pronunciation. Like for "house," he was saying "how." I worked on that s sound at the end. Finally he got it, but it really tried his patience. His older siblings often don't pronounce the s at the end of words, particularly plurals. I'm after them about it all the time when they read aloud.

I asked the boy if Chinese didn't have plural forms of nouns, and maybe that's why it's a problem. No, he said Chinese does have singular and plural forms.
 
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