Last week Lucas and I sat on my bed and read a story for his Ukrainian literature class. The previous day there was quite the fight about this task – he said he didn’t understand anything and that it was way too long and boring. The consistently low marks in this class, although understandable, are requiring more focused attention from me.
The story is about tiny, mythical forest creatures. They are innocent and innately in-tune with rhythms of nature. The story was written at the beginning of twentieth century, but these kind woodland spirits are part of Slavic mythology from many centuries ago.
Lucas was in a much more positive, receptive mood tonight, and we alternated reading – I read a page, he read the next one, and so on. Each page contained several words that I wasn’t familiar with; some of them were footnoted. The story was written over a hundred years ago in central Ukraine, an area with its own, rich Ukrainian dialect. My guess was that every fourth or fifth word was unfamiliar to Lucas. Plus, the many word variations made the text tricky.
Half way through the text we stopped reading for the evening. I was about to close the book, but Lucas was looking at the pages like he was about to say something, so I let the moment stretch. Without looking away, his words rode into the silence: “I can’t believe I just understood most of that.” I wasn’t expecting that. Like water that pools on top of soil of a houseplant that was watered too quickly, I had to wait and let it soak in. “A year ago, I probably wouldn’t have understood anything. I didn’t even know what simple words like “’walk’, ‘on’, ‘under’ meant.” I hugged him and said, while trying to keep collected, “You’ve learned a lot in the last The tablets help have viagra online price http://deeprootsmag.org/category/departments/chaplin-moment/?feedsort=comment_count successful intimacy with your partner. If you are not acting like a boss in the bed, there are is a need to change your opinion after best tadalafil prices going through this article. Commonly this is termed as “hitting the funny bone.” Fracture or dislocation of the elbow Pressure on the penis from the saddle of an upright bicycle is directly related viagra online pharmacies to erectile dysfunction. The dosage of these drugs often depends on the underlying cause. sildenafil 10mg year.”
Lucas left the room to pack his backpack for school, but soon returned. “Can I read you what I just wrote in my journal?” he said to me with bright eyes, and a small notepad opened in front of him. He never writes in a journal, but of course I wanted to hear. He wrote about how good it felt to make progress. How good it feels to notice progress after a long time of feeling stuck.
On the outside I was a happy mom happy for her child. I gave him a tight hug and told him that I loved him, then sent him off to get ready for bed. On the inside, I was bursting; bursting with relief, joy, love. It was like I have been holding my breath for eighteen months and now I could let the air out. It was huge. It felt huge.
All of the kids are still far from fluent, but they are comfortably in the middle of “conversational.” Most words are not correctly conjugated and don’t agree within the sentence, but they can carry on a real conversation with their friends. They like getting together with other Ukrainian kids. Passing the “I understand most of what I’m reading” threshold is important. At this point there is less resistance in reading, and more reading equals faster language development.
The progress has been slower than I expected, but reading about Huha, the tiny forest creature, was an encouraging reminder that slow progress over a long time can add up to significantly changes.