Time to say
hello to all those who read my blog and who I will never know. Please do not
mind me if I become overly philosophical or sentimental.
I am from a
small place even in this small country, Greece. When I was young and green, I
dreamed of ways of getting away from this “confinement”. I needed to see the
world. And in a way I did see the world. I gained a place at a Scottish
University and met and mixed with people from all around the world. Somehow the
world came to me. Even after my return to my humble roots and establishing my
own school of English, where I have consistently tried to combine theory
amassed in my years of study -- graduate and postgraduate as well as seminar
and conference attendance -- with the knowledge I have gained working with and
carefully observing children and adults in the process of learning, I never
gave up travelling or getting to know the big wide world—at least for the first
two decades. However, passions grow thin with time and so did mine. I decided
that I can now draw from my microcosm as much wisdom as from the macrocosm if
only I keep my eyes open and my heart unadulterated. And I have been at it ever
since.
One of the main sources of happiness for me, second only to having and raising my own children, is the interaction with people in class.
Have you
ever noticed how dyslectic people especially children concoct stories with
their perceived version of the content of utterances they hear or of texts they
read? To my eyes (ears) it is an admirable endeavour which often results in much
more intricate tales than the bland insipid statements teachers or other people
come up with.
Imagine:
How much
more interesting would “well done” be if it was “well bone” or “wall done”? Or what if instead of “sick” it was “sock” and rather than "everybody" "every baby"!? There are of course the hybrids such as “wir”,
a mix-up on a semantic level, as in “wind”+”air” or “mouniment“ as in mountain
and “monument”. *
Some students,
the bold ones, go beyond the lexical level and apply their perception of what
was said to the whole sentence. Only the other day I had to hear out a student
who had misinterpreted “fine” as “find” citing a story about finding whatever
it was rather than taking my word for it that the word was “fine” and not “find”.
Their tactic of ignoring endings or grammar rules apparently in order to get to
the core of what is said or written before losing the thread partly contributes
to this attitude. However, it hasn’t
escaped my attention that it is those who refuse to have their bubble burst
that insist on their version. Perhaps I am stretching it a bit, but could it
reveal something about their personality? “I won’t have reality spoil my universe.
I have toiled too much to have it crumbled by anyone”
I can go
along with that. We all have our ways of making reality less intolerable than
it is or looks.
*I have cross-checked
the mix-ups and had them confirmed by the students.
