Introducing (grammar) cases

[regentrude]

46 minutes ago, Not_a_Number said:

I feel like the idea of being a recipient or beneficiary of an action is about the most precise formulation you can make. That really does map onto indirect objects in every example I've found. I think the word "dative" comes from a word for giving, come to think of it. 

I would find that a difficult way to formulate it. In German, the verbs "support", "appreciate", "love", "care for" someone would require the accusative for the beneficiary.

Dative is really the "give" - case (from dare). But it won't easily work for other beneficial verbs.

Edited May 10, 2021 by regentrude

[8filltheheart]

24 minutes ago, Not_a_Number said:

The thing is that I've already had to DEAL with this stupid resistance, and we've been working on overcoming it. As it turns out, if you mostly teach by writing your kids' math lessons and doing Socratic questioning, your kids are resistant about EVERYTHING and you have to just bite the bullet and figure out a way to work with that. We're still figuring it out, but we've made a lot of progress this year -- the pandemic has really helped us focus on ironing out the natural power struggle issues. 

I don't write my kids' math lesson, but I do for almost every single other subject.  Power struggle is not the default kid reaction.  My kids were basically born into homeschooling (bc even my oldest had never attended any sort of group class scenario before we started homeschooling.) It is just what we do.  Homeschooling is not school so much as a lifestyle of learning.

 

[Not_a_Number]

30 minutes ago, 8filltheheart said:

I don't write my kids' math lesson, but I do for almost every single other subject.  Power struggle is not the default kid reaction.  My kids were basically born into homeschooling (bc even my oldest had never attended any sort of group class scenario before we started homeschooling.) It is just what we do.  Homeschooling is not school so much as a lifestyle of learning.

I'm sure it depends on the specific kids, specific parents, and the minutiae of the interactions. For us, power struggles have been an issue and we're working on it. Writing my kids' lessons isn't optional for me, so we've had to work on it. We're figuring it out.  

 

34 minutes ago, regentrude said:

I would find that a difficult way to formulate it. In German, the verbs "support", "appreciate", "love", "care for" someone would require the accusative for the beneficiary.

Dative is really the "give" - case (from dare). But it won't easily work for other beneficial verbs.

Yes, that's right, but then there isn't any object being given in those cases. (Although "like" is, weirdly, enough in dative in Russian. That's kind of how we got going on dative first -- we were using it pretty often in phrases about liking things already.) But anyway... I think that's the kind of distinction that at least gets us started. After that, one operates by feel in languages, anyway. 

So, hmmm... perhaps in dative you mostly can point to something you are actually giving or some activity you're assisting with that you could insert into the sentence? Like, I'm reading you a book. I'm giving you a present. I'm helping you do something. I'm conceding my spot to you. 

Of course, now that I'm looking it up, there are also other situations you'd use dative, like "walking along the road." So that's separate. Hmmm. Perhaps I'll worry about those later -- those feel objectively different. 

[Matryoshka]

32 minutes ago, 8filltheheart said:

I don't write my kids' math lesson, but I do for almost every single other subject.  Power struggle is not the default kid reaction.  My kids were basically born into homeschooling (bc even my oldest had never attended any sort of group class scenario before we started homeschooling.) It is just what we do.  Homeschooling is not school so much as a lifestyle of learning.

I had this dream.  But somehow either I am not as talented a teacher (quite probably) or my kids just weren't as self-motivated or wanting to be encouraged and facilitated as I had fantasized about (definitely), or a combination of both.  How you could have eight children all of whom went enthusiastically along for the ride is amazing.  I had soooo many dreams of designing high school courses around their interests.  By the time we got there they wanted nothing to do with it, in spite of my trying to encourage their interests and follow their learning style and yes, encourage a lifestyle of learning.  SIGH.

I am very much a lifestyle of learning person.  I am I think a lot like your dd who taught herself the languages.  I love teaching myself things, and now that the kids are gone, I am reading widely on all kinds of things and learning three new languages.  But somehow my kids didn't turn out like me.  At least not at middle/high school ages - I'm seeing glimmers of hope as they become young adults.

[Not_a_Number]

1 minute ago, Matryoshka said:

I had this dream.  But somehow either I am not as talented a teacher (quite probably) or my kids just weren't as self-motivated or wanting to be encouraged and facilitated as I had fantasized about (definitely), or a combination of both. 

I tend to think the devil is in the details with this stuff. Figuring out how to have a productive teaching relationship with one's own kids is just HARD. At least, it's hard for those of us for whom it doesn't come easy 😉 . 

It's like everything -- those of us who can just DO things naturally don't always know what it is exactly that makes it work. I'm definitely not in this category for the "removing power struggles" situation. We keep having to tinkering. 

[Matryoshka]

6 minutes ago, Not_a_Number said:

I tend to think the devil is in the details with this stuff. Figuring out how to have a productive teaching relationship with one's own kids is just HARD. At least, it's hard for those of us for whom it doesn't come easy 😉 . 

It's like everything -- those of us who can just DO things naturally don't always know what it is exactly that makes it work. I'm definitely not in this category for the "removing power struggles" situation. We keep having to tinkering. 

You never know what's going to come a few years down the road!  You could end up like Eight with awesome children teaching themselves physics and two foreign languages to fluency in their bedrooms.  But I'm just saying, at eight years old things were very smooth sailing here, all fun collaboration and no resistance at all.  That came later (and why I was a bit blindsided by it, perhaps).

[Not_a_Number]

1 minute ago, Matryoshka said:

You never know what's going to come a few years down the road!  You could end up like Eight with awesome children teaching themselves physics and two foreign languages to fluency in their bedrooms.  But I'm just saying, at eight years old things were very smooth sailing here, all fun collaboration and no resistance at all.  That came later (and why I was a bit blindsided by it, perhaps).

Oh, we're not having that at age 8, lol. 😛 Which is honestly probably for the best, because we've started figuring out how to deal with it. 

DD8 is highly gifted and is in no way a people pleaser. She simply doesn't care that much what people think of her. It's in some ways an admirable trait, but it means that she has very limited natural drive for compliance. 

When did the resistance start for you and what happened? 

[8filltheheart]

16 minutes ago, Matryoshka said:

I had this dream.  But somehow either I am not as talented a teacher (quite probably) or my kids just weren't as self-motivated or wanting to be encouraged and facilitated as I had fantasized about (definitely), or a combination of both. 

I didn't mean to imply a negative, just that the implication that kids don't like to learn from their parents is equally a stereotype that doesn't translate well to all families either.   My kids don't know anything different.  Learning any other way was never an option.  When they balk, they find themselves surrounded by more work to do.  Complaining is a big no-go here.  Also, being one of many means they learn early on that they have to have responsibility for themselves including learning to meet their personal goals. 

Edited May 10, 2021 by 8filltheheart

[Not_a_Number]

2 minutes ago, 8filltheheart said:

I didn't mean to imply a negative, just that the implication that kids don't like to learn from their parents is equally a stereotype that doesn't translate well to all families either.   My kids don't know anything different.  Learning any other way was never an option.  When they balk, they find themselves surrounded by more work to do.  Complaining is a big no-go here.  Also, being one of many means they learn early on that they have to have responsibility for themselves including learning.  

We're kind of transitioning to a system where complaining is a no-go, lol. And in general, I'm finding that setting more rigid boundaries about what is allowed and what is not allowed in our homeschooling situation has been helping. 

I'd imagine that having more kids made this kind of necessary from the very beginning. Like, as you've said before -- your kids HAVE to learn to entertain themselves, because there's no choice. But while I've tried hard to make that happen here, I've never actually required it until recently. 

Anyway, for us having stricter boundaries about what's acceptable has been helpful. I don't know if that's similar to what you did or not (I simply don't understand dynamics of big families in the same way), but that's what currently helping here. 

Edited May 10, 2021 by Not_a_Number

[Matryoshka]

1 minute ago, 8filltheheart said:

I didn't mean to imply a negative, just that the implication that kids don't like to learn from their parents is equally a stereotype that doesn't translate well to all families either.   My kids don't know anything different.  Learning any other way was never an option.  When they balk, they find themselves surrounded by more work to do.  Complaining is a big no-go here.  Also, being one of many means they learn early on that they have to have responsibility for themselves including learning.  

Yep, tried that.  They never knew anything different either.  Piling more work on for many kids who already won't do what they were supposed to is just a bigger mountain and they give up.  

[jrichstad]

1 hour ago, regentrude said:

In my experience, that may have to do with musicality. The ability to hear and mimic a language is an ear thing.

This definitely seems true. I can learn vocabulary and grammar without even really trying*--Latin, French, German I can all muddle my way through on paper and in Spanish I'm fairly fluent but I've had to work for a *year* to understand the most basic spoken Spanish ...and when it comes to speaking I sound like a complete barbarian and most likely always will. Same with music. I can learn the technical aspects of an instrument pretty easily but my ear is so bad that I can't recognize a tune unless I've heard it over and over and over and I have a really hard time picking out melodies.

It's kind of a bummer but we work with what we've got 🤷

[Not_a_Number]

32 minutes ago, Matryoshka said:

Yep, tried that.  They never knew anything different either.  Piling more work on for many kids who already won't do what they were supposed to is just a bigger mountain and they give up.  

Yes, piling on more work didn't work for us 😛 . We just tried that, actually, and had to backtrack. Mostly because it turned out that when I piled on more work, I STILL wanted it done well, and it was done so awfully I couldn't make peace with it. 

Edited May 11, 2021 by Not_a_Number

[Not_a_Number]

IMHO, after much experimenting... I think power struggles depend a lot on your "family culture," so to speak. How final is your final word? How much debating about schoolwork is acceptable? What are the boundaries under which your homeschool operates? 

I've mused a lot about the fact that DD8 behaved a lot better for ME in a class I taught than she did for the same old me at home. So we've been experimenting with changing the atmosphere of the homeschooling. At the end of the day, we all feel better when we agree that for the duration of the homeschooling, I'm in charge and they don't have the choice not to do what I ask. I have to be a benevolent dictator for things to work for us. For better and worse. 

[Not_a_Number]

(And yet in some ways we've been increasing autonomy as well. It's all been interesting to experiment with. I don't know that we're done figuring things out, but I hope things will continue to improve here. Because the power struggles were definitely not going away on their own here.) 

[Not_a_Number]

@Matryoshka: so when did the resistance start for you and how? 

[Matryoshka]

2 hours ago, Not_a_Number said:

@Matryoshka: so when did the resistance start for you and how? 

Tried to DM you - your mailbox is full!

[Not_a_Number]

6 minutes ago, Matryoshka said:

Tried to DM you - your mailbox is full!

Drat. Will clear!

[Not_a_Number]

9 minutes ago, Matryoshka said:

Tried to DM you - your mailbox is full!

Cleared some space 🙂 

[Not_a_Number]

As a quick update (partially for you, @Animula V. Blandula!) -- we've started trying to read in Russian again, and she's now making a lot more sense of what she's reading. Also, she'd done some handwriting practice over the last few months and her reading had gotten more fluent through that, too. 

So I think the reading road mightn't be a bad way to go 🙂 . We're still mostly focusing on verbs and noun/adjective genders and are talking about different "forms" of nouns, as well as occasionally dipping into dative when it comes up. 

Right now, our reading is done together and we have to talk about every sentence to make any sense of it, but it looks like "reading as exposure" may not be that far off. I'll have to go find a Russian bookstore somewhere on Brighton Beach when we get back... 

[VminusEplusFis2]

That's really nice! Most of the reading DS does in Chinese is the same way, actually: he reads out loud to me, and I make sure he gets the pronunciation and meaning right. One mom I know of did this daily, 20 mins everyday, for 2 years before she decided her daughter was ready to read independently. (Her little girl was very young, though, and they were learning Chinese.) Anyway, it is OK if it takes time, especially if everyone is enjoying the process.

One idea that I've seen parents of bilingual kids swear by is listening to audiobooks, perhaps starting with foreign translations of books the children already know well in English. Personally, I do a lot of read-alouds, which your family might enjoy, too. You could start either with very simple books or ones that are translations of books the children already know. What is really nice about doing read-alouds in a foreign language is that you could introduce your children to some really great literature this way, and many authors that are not that popular here in the US. We've been covering a lot of European and Asian children's book authors this way, ones that I would have probably never discovered if we only read in English.

There might be some nice bilingual Russian/English kids' groups on facebook, full of ideas for fun books for all levels/ages and also ideas for how and where to best order them. Just beware: if you join those groups, your place might soon start getting buried in beautiful Russian books for your girls while your wallet gets lighter. 🙂

Edited May 12, 2021 by Animula V. Blandula

[Not_a_Number]

11 minutes ago, Animula V. Blandula said:

That's really nice! Most of the reading DS does in Chinese is the same way, actually: he reads out loud to me, and I make sure he gets the pronunciation and meaning right. One mom I know of did this daily, 20 mins everyday, for 2 years before she decided her daughter was ready to read independently. (Her little girl was very young, though, and they were learning Chinese.) Anyway, it is OK if it takes time, especially if everyone is enjoying the process.

I imagine it'll take us less than 2 years 😄 . 

11 minutes ago, Animula V. Blandula said:

One idea that I've seen parents of bilingual kids swear by is listening to audiobooks, perhaps starting with foreign translations of books the children already know well in English.

Hmmmm. Interesting idea 🙂 . I think for now, the cartoons are better, because they can still follow them without needing to understand every word. But I think we'll do audiobooks later, at least with DD5 -- she likes audiobooks a lot. Knowing DD8, she'll pick up reading easier than audiobooks. As I said, picking up symbols is her superpower. At the moment, she reads Russian, English, and Hebrew script, and I'd assume she'll learn 1-2 more 😛 . 

 

11 minutes ago, Animula V. Blandula said:

Personally, I do a lot of read-alouds, which your family might enjoy, too. You could start either with very simple books or ones that are translations of books the children already know. What is really nice about doing read-alouds in a foreign language is that you could introduce your children to some really great literature this way, and many authors that are not that popular here in the US. We've been covering a lot of European and Asian children's book authors this way, ones that I would have probably never discovered if we only read in English.

Oooh. Not a bad idea at all. The only problem is where in the world I'd stuff that into the day, lol. But I'll have to keep that on my radar. 

We do do readalouds for history and science this year, although it's been a bit of a struggle keeping those fun. I have a tendency to grill the kids 😛 . 

 

11 minutes ago, Animula V. Blandula said:

There might be some nice bilingual Russian/English kids' groups on facebook, full of ideas for fun books for all levels/ages and also ideas for how and where to best order them. Just beware: if you join those groups, your place might soon start getting buried in beautiful Russian books for your girls while your wallet gets lighter. 🙂

Hahahah, I don't mind about my wallet, but I need more space for books first!!! We already don't know where to stick the ones we have. And we have boxes and boxes in our storage locker in Austin, too. 

[Xahm]

Learning through reading sounds great. I have a postcard of an old Soviet propaganda poster I'll try to dig up saying "Read or you will forget your grammar!" or something like that