Teaching and philosophy

 

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.