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Post by Trebias on May 24, 2008 20:34:23 GMT -5
El nodded. “You did okay, considering your parents didn’t help you much. Sounds like you’re just having problems with the odd words, the ones that don’t sound out quite like they look.” He took the book back, and set it to the side.
“All I was trying to do was see where you’re at, so that I don’t waste too much of your time going over basics you already have. We’ll start writing, using. . .the dirt, I guess. When I was growing up, I heard a phrase, it just kind of stuck with me, and it’s helped me a lot both in learning things and whenever I’ve needed to teach people. It says ‘I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.’ So, what we’re going to do is write a lot of words out, learn the exceptions to the rules that usually go with reading, and use all that to help you put it all together. Scratch out your alphabet for me.”
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Post by seraaches on May 24, 2008 21:03:35 GMT -5
Rai gave another very put upon sigh and headed to a blank area of dirt so he could start trying to write out the letters. He was just as awkward with this action as he was with his attempts to read and the letters he pawed into the dirt weren't very pretty to look at. He caught a few uppercase letters and a few lower, the two mixed in together, though he did manage the full alphabet after a bit of thought-- and only slightly out of order.
aBCDEFhiJglkMNoQprsUVtwxYZ
The young horse sent the crazy alphabet a long, dour look; he knew there was something wrong with it, but he didn't know the actual correct order, so he would just have to wait until Elias corrected him. Hopefully without a great deal of mockery or laughing.
The boy's ears were back with unease and he waited for judgment on his writing.
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Post by Trebias on May 24, 2008 23:08:01 GMT -5
Elias watched as Rai wrote out his alphabet. He opened his mouth to help a couple of times when it seemed like the colt was stuck, but each time the colt carried on.
He inspected the finished work, and saw it for exactly what it was. “You know, I wonder sometimes if there has to be a right order to the alphabet. I’m not justifying anything, just a thought. Because here it looks like you’ve memorized it the best you can, associating some together by shape, and getting them mixed up for the same reason. I think if I sat you down and wrote letters, you’d recognize them. You don’t know the upper- and lower-case for all the letters? We can fix that easily enough.”
He thought silently for a second, then nodded his head. “We’ll start with the song, that will help you better remember the alphabet, which will help you learn to read.” He scratched out his own alphabet in all upper-case. It wasn’t much prettier; paws aren’t much better for the task than hooves, but he managed it. “Now, we’ll start learning the song.” He sang the alphabet song through once normal pace, then began slowly walking Rai through it, pointing to each letter as it came up in the song.
“Before you start acting just like a teenager and say that you already know all this, I’ll just go ahead and interject. It’s like your physical therapy. You can probably rush ahead faster since you know this a little, but taking it slower and mastering the basics will make it easier for you in the long run. So there, kid.”
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Post by seraaches on May 29, 2008 14:22:12 GMT -5
Rai's ears went back with an equal need to smart off at Elias, but he hadn't forgotten his promise about accepting the older man's training. As such, he forced himself to swallow his sarcastic remarks, especially when the Marshdweller canine beat him to a few of them.
"Fine, fine! the boy exclaimed, flicking his long tail in surrender. "Let's learn your silly children's song and move on!".
The colt kept his face serious as they began to go over it, but as he really began to lean, the mocking humour slipped away, leaving only an earnestness behind. The song helped a lot, making it a great deal easier to remember the order of the letters versus just spilling them out of his head.
He soon had it down, though he was a bit anxious that tomorrow he'd lose part of it. He kept repeating it under his breath, not wanting to embarrass himself in front of El. "So, wot's next?" he asked as nonchalantly as he could.
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Post by Trebias on Jun 1, 2008 10:30:47 GMT -5
"Good going, kid. I didn't expect any less." He thought for a moment. What should the next part of the studies be? "Well, you should learn how to figure numbers, too. I think that should wait, though. Math is a universally useful skill, but you're going to run into cases where you need to read, or have enough reading and writing skills to figure out what something means more often than you'll need math. That's my experience, anyway.
"Question is, where to start? I'm thinking we'll work on your phonics. That means learning how words should sound when you read them. The letters can do some pretty strange things when you put them together, so learning the special cases along with the basics helps a lot. Then, if you have trouble with a word, you'll be able to look it up in a dictionary. Yeah, I think that's best." He cleared the ground and drew the letter A, both capital and lowercase. "May as well start at the beginning, I guess." Elias then covered long and short sounds for the vowels, and covered cases where a silent E or some other case was causing the long sound. "Don't rightly know why they call them long sounds, though. You can make them just as long or as short as you want to, just like the short sounds. Ah, whatever. Think you have the vowels so far?"
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Post by seraaches on Jun 1, 2008 13:35:28 GMT -5
Rai thought his head was going to explode. He stared down at the vowel diagram and asked in a rather awed voice, "Why in the world do they have so many different sounds for so few letters? Wouldn't it be easier to have more letters to represent each different sound?"
Language, the colt decided, was bonkers.
He was also thinking that he needed to get out and do something physical pretty fast because his brain felt like it was in overload. He'd even be willing to harvest some of that nasty kelp stuff from one of the swamps if it just got him out of the vowels and alphabets for awhile.
Unbeknownst to the young horse, his eyes had turned slightly glazed and it was fairly obvious from looking at him that he was about done in for now. He sent the canine a pleading glance.
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Post by Trebias on Jun 2, 2008 0:20:33 GMT -5
“Actually,” El said after some thought, “I don’t know if it would be easier. It would just mean more letters that you’d have to master before you could really learn to read. I’ve heard of languages that do that, they just have different letters or marks or whatever for their different sounds, but I don’t know how well those work.”
He scratched his head a while. He hadn’t thought about it, but it might be a good idea for them to learn other languages, slang, that sort of thing. They’d never be able to blend in with another group, El suspected, but they could at least learn how they say things. Especially the Lowlands. He didn’t know exactly why, but he had a hunch something like that would help them out someday.
He was about to share this thought with the colt when he looked over. The kid had the classic signs of over-learning: glazed eyes, total lack of interest. “All right, that’s enough for now. Let’s get some recess, eh? We’ll start moving some buckets of water to the garden, and go from there.” He didn’t realize it, but he had a long way to go to learn what fun was.
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Post by seraaches on Jun 2, 2008 12:08:36 GMT -5
Rai gave a little put-out sigh, but, really, even moving buckets of water was far better than trying to get more letters squeezed into his head. He stretched, letting the muscle tension slip from every part of him, then trotted off obediently to get the needed buckets.
As he filled his the first time, his mind was going over the alphabet again and as he trotted past El to dump the first load-- irrigation the hard way, yay!-- he could be heard humming the little melody.
Later that afternoon, Rai was back at the dirt, carefully re-writing each letter of the alphabet. He erased the capital 'G'-- which had ended up backwards and a little squiggly-- and began to write it again. He snorted in annoyance as the curved back refused to be nice and smooth. Not that his 'C' was oh, so perfect, but for some reason he couldn't seem to recreate the curve.
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Post by Trebias on Jun 4, 2008 1:47:32 GMT -5
El watched the colt from a distance, smiling. He knew the colt would be at it for a while, and debated whether he should tell the kid to give it a rest, or let him get his fill for the day. Finally, he decided on something in the middle, and walked over.
"All right, Whip, I just had an idea. We're going to end the lessons each day with some assignments. I'll give you some words, and you write them. Then we'll move on to sentences, but we'll keep it small because it's such a pain in the $^% to write like this. Another point for growing hands, even if these bodies are stronger. So, at the end of lessons, I'll give you a new word to write, and you're done for the day when you can write it. Sound good? Your words for tonight are telephone, automatic, and transport. Whattya got?"
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Post by seraaches on Jun 4, 2008 10:30:06 GMT -5
The colt spoke up suddenly, thoughtfulness etched across his face. "I'd rather learn now with my hooves and teeth anyway. Anyone can learn to write with hands; this shows something more." What exactly more, he did not say, and the thought seemed to now slip from his mind as he concentrated very hard on the words Elias had assigned to him.
The fact that he now had 'homework' didn't seem to bother him, however, and was likely just another sign of the colt actually being intelligent; he enjoyed working his intellect. He put a lot of effort into it now, actually, as he began mouthing the words El gave him and pondering the phonics he'd been taught earlier.
He finally bit his lip and wrote out the first one. Tehlufon. As he stared at the word, however, he knew it was wrong. His face grew dark and he narrowed his eyes. Crossing it out, he tried again. Tehlafone. It still didn't look right, but that was how it sounded. Mostly. He mouthed the word again. Homework, evidently, wasn't going to be overly easy.
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