Some of my best russian lessons have been had while watching, waiting and often participating in the fixing of bumps, bangs, scrapes and general wear and tear of Nadya the LADA and Freddy the VW.
Back in Nadya's day there was the time we were having her brakes seen to. I was in the hoisted up car (not so unusual here), being commanded by a guy named Hussein (quite unusual for here, hence why I remember his name) and was responsible for pressing, holding, pumping and letting go of the brake pedal. They say total physical response is a great way to learn a language, especially verbs, and I would have to agree. I think however, that the words might not have stuck so well, if it wasn't for the fact that I was then able to use 3 of the 4 of them in teaching computer skills to our Tumdi 9th graders.
Before that fun hour spent in a barely heated, dimly lit, exhaust and smoke-filled garage, pressing, holding, and letting go of the brake pedal, I had resorted to a lot of sound effects in my first efforts to teach basic mouse manipulation skills to computer illiterate teens who gripped those mouse-s with steel trap-like grips.
"Just {click} this button once. No {click}. No! Make it sound like this! {click}"
"Ok, to make this window bigger, first you need to {click} but keep it {cliccckkkkkkked}..."
Nope. There's just no way to make a "press and hold" sound with you tongue. I didn't even get to the "let go of the button" sound. The kids were probably just as frustrated as I was. Perhaps they should be called sound in-effects!
However, after repeated reinforcement with Hussein and the brake pedal, I was a master at these 3 russian verbs.
"Just press once. Good"
"Ok, now press and hold,... good, and now let go."
Ahhh,.... the victory of using words... now I know what a talking toddler feels like!
It's just a shame that all my car mechanic words can't be as useful. Thanks to a recent adventure with the gas pedal on Freddy, I learnt the russian word for throttle - for the space of about a week. At the time, I checked my online dictionary and found that unfortunately I can't use it to say to little G, or any other graduate who is acting up: "I could throttle you!!!" (lovingly of course)
Pity. I suspect it would have been a helpful way to reinforce my new vocab addition. Instead, the word has been relegated to the "might recognize it, but can't reproduce it" drawer of my brain.
1 comment:
BRILLIANT!
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