This evening I found myself in the position of a tutor.
The husbandman is taking French 102 without ever taking or even hearing French before.
My youngest brother doesn't get his grammar workbook.
I cockily volunteered to help both of them. I have taken French in both high school and college, and I do believe that I have a decent grip on the grammar of my own language.
Was I stupid. The youngest brother opened up the workbook to the lesson on noun cases. I didn't even know English had noun cases. So I spent dinner and the rest of the evening trying to teach him about nominative and objective nouns while learning it myself.
Then I finally got my head around that, and went down stairs to go read (yeah right). The husbandman was working on homework without a textbook or a French/English dictionary. So I pulled up the websites I knew, and desperately racked my mind trying to remember how to conjugate avoir and etre.
Teaching is hard. I'm so grateful for the wonderful teachers who were always patient, always calm, and especially always kind. It's not easy learning things in such as way to be able to explain them to others. Putting into words a thought that you know without thought (if that makes any sense) is even harder to do than to describe.
My lesson of the day ~ thank your teachers. Its almost impossible to truly teach someone without caring for them.
2 comments:
The problem with English grammar is that most people learn it while taking a foreign language. I never heard of nominative case until Greek last fall. But, yay for teachers! and I'm absolutely positive you are a great tutor :)
Thanks Steph! I'm not so sure, but he seemed to understand a little better, and now I'm teaching his grammar lesson everyday. I haven't had grammar since 3rd grade, so, I'm way behind...
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