I was concerned when the teacher said Fatini is not able to read English yet in comparison to her peers. According to the teacher she was taught only the ABC alphabets in the previous school and was not taught the phonics, i.e. how the alphabets sound. However on the positive side she could read Malay and Mandarin which use different methods and she started fresh in this new school. Off course she picked up mandarin well, every time she went to the library on Saturday she picks up Mandarin story book while all her friends pick up English book (this reminds me I have yet to find Emir’s book borrowed from the library and seemed to be missing). So I decided to take some proactive step to teach her. Children learn to read English from the phonic method. Well, what do I know about this method? I have to learn myself. So I searched the internet and there are not so many sites that offer this lesson on video or sound clip for free. I mean phonic is learning to read via the sound and hearing. So I need to know first by sound. I also went to the Kinokuniya bookshop and spent almost 2 hours looking for appropriate books and came out empty handed. So I printed some materials from the internet and last night I started on the lesson with her.
I could see she mispronounced some of the alphabets sounds and also didn’t know the sound of short combination of alphabets. And then she laughed when I taught her the correct way to pronounce the sound of the alphabets. She didn’t take me seriously because I am her mom not her teacher. I am actually a bad teacher and do not possess the patience and skills to handle a student. I also tend to go very fast when teaching.
Well maybe currently I don’t have the traits required to teach but I decided I have to learn to be a teacher now. Anyway I got annoyed with Fatini for not taking the lesson seriously and scolded her. And Fatini my sensitive girl took offence and merajuk for a minute, however we managed to continue. I could see she picked up very fast and I managed to spell something on paper like c-a-t and she read it “cat” and I spelled b-a-t and she pronounced it ‘bat’ correctly. Good job (on me!).
I decide I will spend half an hour with her nightly to go through this routine. I am not that particular about her achievement to be so fast but I was thinking if she could read she would enjoy her reading much more. This will build up her self confidence. While Fatini is learning to read with me Emir participated as well which was good for Emir even though he seemed to make a lot of mess with the papers and wanted to get his hand on the very one that Fatini’s holding. I am really anxious to get my little project going - getting Fatini to read.
