Thursday, July 9, 2009

English is Confusing

I was trying to teach Eli some letters in the alphabet tonight, and I realized that English is really confusing! I was showing him letters on the front cover of a book. He can recognize upper case Es because that's what his name starts with. I figured I would show him what an l and an i look like. We did pretty well with l, so I moved on to eye. He points at it just like I do and repeats it a few times and then he looks at me quizzically and brings his hand to his eye and repeats the same sound. YES, Eli, eye and I sound the same, but one is a letter and one is a body part. How do you explain to a little guy that it's the same sound but not the same thing?! Now every time he sees an i anywhere, he points to it and then his eye.

*sigh* English sucks!

4 comments:

Cassidy said...

Yeah I was trying to do the alphabet today with Carter, and we ended in a fight at the letter F. He kept INSISTING that it was a B. Oh it was frustrating. He's never gonna learn because her refuses to listen.

Laura said...

I taught an adult ESL class for two years. After explaining something to the students, they would ask, "does this apply every time?" I would usually have to say no, there are always exceptions. It made things very difficult sometimes!

Cheryl said...

I'm right there with you, its been so tough trying to teach my 6 year old how to read because of it.

Neighbor Jane Payne said...

Yeah and so does Chinese :)