It has been a long pause since my last diary entry. There are some reasons for it. I have been spending a lot of time on pronunciation exercises with Rachel. Rachel is an excellent teacher, but I am a little unsure if her method for teaching an old bag is the most effective one. No, I don’t give it up, but I think it’s not wrong to observe the situation a bit critically. Why? She supplied an understanding test for understanding the phrase “at the” in the sentence, or to find out if there isn’t such a word sequence. There were about 10 tests, and I finished them with 50% success. That’s bad, really bad, looking like a random game. Then I had the chance to give this test to four of my grandchildren. Three of them absolved it with 100% correctness. And the fourth one with 90%, also a good figure. He is the youngest one with way less English practice and exercise than the others.
What can be the reason for this big difference with respect to me? I talked with them about this, and almost all of them reported that they understand the phrase or sentence totally. And so they found out if there is an “at the” pattern in it or not. I must admit that I didn’t understand the phrase vaguely, or almost nothing of it, and tried urgently to pick up “at the”, or couldn’t pick it up. That, of course, wasn’t a good strategy, and it wouldn’t help me to enrich a full understanding. Now I have to risk repeating this test, and the former ones too, with the ambitious goal to understand it completely, and to fish “at the” by semantics, not by phonetics. Should I try it today? I think I’m too cowardly for it. It’s too dangerous for me, for my self-confidence.
This text was written down with a pen, and then dictated. I will test it with my new prompt for learning casual English.
Now the casual English variant:
It’s been a while since my last diary entry. There are a few reasons for that. I’ve been spending a lot of time working on pronunciation with Rachel. She’s a great teacher, but I’m not totally sure if her method really works best for someone like me—an old bag.
No, I’m not giving up! But I think it’s fair to look at the whole thing with a bit of a critical eye.
Why? Well, she gave me a listening test to check if I could catch the phrase “at the” in a sentence—or figure out if that phrase wasn’t even there. There were about ten clips, and I only got around half right. That’s bad. Honestly, it felt like guessing.
Then I had four of my grandkids try the test. Three of them nailed it—100% correct. The fourth got 90%, which is still really solid. And he’s actually the youngest, with way less English exposure than the others.
So what’s behind this big gap between them and me? I talked to them, and most of them said they just got the meaning of the whole sentence. That helped them figure out if “at the” was in there or not.
I’ve got to admit—I didn’t really get the meaning at all. I just tried hard to catch the phrase “at the”, and often I just couldn’t. That strategy clearly doesn’t cut it. It doesn’t help build full understanding either.
Now I need to go back and redo that test—and the earlier ones too—with the goal of really understanding the content. I need to pick up the phrase “at the” from context, not just sound.
Should I give it a shot today? Honestly, I think I’m too chicken. It’s a bit risky—for my self-confidence.