Thanks for your prayers for our literacy class! It was an intense 6 weeks, but for the first ever literacy class in My Language, it went pretty well if I do say so myself. 🙂 We had 10 students, guys and girls, ranging in age from teenagers to our oldest student who is in her 60s. They were all already literate in French, which was a pre-requisite this time, so in 24 hours (2 hours on Saturday and Sunday afternoons for 6 weeks) we were able to get through our 6 primers and our 6 readers, and they can all read and write (more or less) in My Language!
While I was heavily involved, I didn’t do any of the teaching. So much of this language is based on tone, meaning that if you say a word with a slightly different pitch on one of the syllables, it’s wrong grammatically. For example, if you say the word “cup” like we normally would, it could mean “the cup.” But if you said it “cup!?!”, it would mean “a cup.” And there are other things like that, on almost all our words. Since my tone is still far from good enough to know all the minute differences, I helped coach our 3 main alphabet party guys during the week, then they taught on the weekends. And they did a much better job than I would have been able to do! (During the weeks we also had to finish correcting our primers and readers, so we were staying a bit ahead of the students each week.)
What’s next for literacy? I don’t really know. It’s in the Lord’s hands, and we’ll probably talk about it more after we’ve had a few days to recuperate from the busyness.
PS. In the picture above you can see one of our teachers and our 10 students. That classroom is a public school 4th grade classroom. On the roster they have 126 students in that one class!
PPS. The media below (each under a minute) is to allow you join us a bit. The first picture is of the page that is being read by one of the students in the audio. The audio picks up where my finger is. When you hear a teacher correcting him, it’s because of tone. The second picture and accompanying audio below is of one of the teachers helping read a chart showing some of our tone complications. In the first row across, you’ll see “he said that he’s not eating,” “it said that it’s not eating,” “they said that they are not eating,” and “I said that I’m not eating.” In the second row it’s “When/if he/it/they/I eat…” In the third row it’s “He/it/they/I (are going) in order to eat.” And the last row is “He/it/they/I were eating.” Can you find the mistake that the teacher made when he was reading this chart?
(In the first row across, you’ll see “he said that he’s not eating,” “it said that it’s not eating,” “they said that they are not eating,” and “I said that I’m not eating.” In the second row it’s “When/if he/it/they/I eat…” In the third row it’s “He/it/they/I (are going) in order to eat.” And the last row is “He/it/they/I were eating.” Can you find the mistake that the teacher made when he was reading this chart?)
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