An English patient.

Mon, 02 Sep 2013 09:29:00 +0100

My daughter wanted to play the doctor game. I used a mediator, a toy patient (Coco bear) an English native speaker. The bear was in terrible pain. But he could not speak, obvious, Romanian. I was the nurse and the bear voice. I introduced the bear saying that he can not speak any other language than English and that she must treat him (and put him some questions). We started with Hello. She asked only in Romanian. She repeted some words that the patient said. I did not translated.
The doctor asked for two times what's the problem, what hurts him.
Patient: My belly. My belly. (He showed his belly so that the doctor understands where is the problem)
Doctor: Have you eat to many sweets?
The patient could not understand. I did not translated. I hoped she would have said it in another way, by showing somehow the question.
The patient: It hurts so much! It really hurts. The bear swayed from side to side, he was complaining.
Doctor: He definitely ate a lot of sweets. Open your mouth. Say Aaaaa.... aaaaa....
After each question / request, the patient was saying something like:
"Oh, do you want me to open my mouth", "You want me to turn around", "You want me to hold my breath", "You want me to say my name/age" etc.
I insisted on this: "My name is Coco Bear. I am 3 years old." I showed with my fingers.
Also the patient asked for a few time if everything's ok (showing the sign for ok). The doctor also pointed with her fingers for a few time "Ok". The patient also used expressions like "Good?", "Not good?" (at "not good", the bear shook his head).
After the game ended we talked about body parts. She already knows to say in English head, shoulders, knees, toes, eyes, ears, mouth and nose (from the famous song for children). But she did not realise that she can already use the word "mouth" when she said "Open your mouth" in Romanian. I would have been better for the nurse to interfere more? To give her some clues about the words she already know?
But it was an experience. We will try in a different way someother time.

Language experience with my children

Mon, 02 Sep 2013 07:03:00 +0100

My 5 year old son Nick likes warriors and fighting. He wanted to play with me and gave me a Starwars soldier. I told him, that I would gladly play with him, but he has to make from play dough a character, that will be strong enough to fight with my soldier and gave him time – 5 minutes.

He managed his task rather quickly and came to me. (here I should have asked him questions regarding his character, like why did he choose such colour, what does his character like, where is he from…but this idea came to me much later); I told him, that my soldier speaks only English, because the film was made in America and all characters in the film speak English.

So I started conversation for the Soldier – Hello! (Son with his character replied Hello)Then I asked – What’s your name? (My son started to speak an imaginary language, explaining that this is the language of his character. I smiled and explained that he wanted to play with my soldier, he speaks only English , so if he want to fight with him, he has to speak English to him. So I silently translated what the Soldier asked and silently whispered to my son what he should answer in English. Nick repeated my phrases during the dialogue and I translated to him what the soldier told. Then the warriors fought and waved each other goodbye.

After this game my daughter Dana (3 y.o.) came to me and gave me a horse. She was carrying a toy for herself. The dialogue repeated (and Dana also started to speak an imaginary language and I switched her into English).

I do play such games from time to time with my children. They regularly watch English cartoons, documentaries. In our everyday conversation English occasionally appears, but very seldom. My son likes to greet our family friends with Hello! At the moment this is the second word that he seems to know. The first was “Dinosaur!” from Peppa Pig series.

Blog entries tagged playing_with_objects

An English patient.

Language experience with my children