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Friday
Oct052007

Why two sets? (updated)

Jr. was having some fun with an english workbook she got as a gift. This is now our usual routine in the evenings.

Today she had to answer a question which was :

_______ went to swim.

the three choices were

Him
I
i

She figured out that Him was wrong as soon as she read that option.

Then she looked at me and asked me a very profound question.

"Daddy, why do we need two set of letters with all this uppercase and lowercase stuff? Why can't we have just all uppercase or all lowercase?"

I really do not have an answer for that one! Why? Why?

Now, I have a question for my parents!

Was I smart or lazy enough to ask that question when I was learning english? and if I did, were you proud of me?

Why do we need two sets of letters people? Answer me!

==========
Anon commenter... Just a thought!

THIS IS SHOUTING

THIS IS NOT SHOUTING

i rest my case

==========

now I have another question.. Does Tamizh have ! in the alphabet, punctuation.. I have to go and read about the history of punctuation marks. Tonight's homework..

.

Monday
May212007

When you assume ..

My high school physics teacher taught me :

When you "ass-u-me" you make an ass of you and me!

So, I did make an ass of me, when I assumed that textbooks in the USA would go through some kind of rigorous checking and proof reading before hitting the stands.

Worse, I assumed that teachers who give homework handouts, will check what they hand out, for quality!

As most of you have pointed out in response to my previous post, it does not sound right to write the letter "M" that way.

The reason I got all mad was that 5 of the 26 alphabets had an error in the way the strokes were mentioned!! Imagine how it would slow a kid down while taking notes in high school or college! I survived high school simply because I would write very fast and take extensive notes to go over at home. God forbid, Jr. ends up learning like me, and relies on notes, except she cannot write fast enough because 20% of the time she is going back and forth writing wrong strokes.. the nightmare!!

Here are some pictures from the homework sheet.



ACtually the option in the book (Phonics II - California syllabus ?) is worse!


Me rest case!

What ?

That sentence will be perfectly legitimate and taught in text books by the time Jr. hits middle school.

.