Dearest Dema,
We are finally caught up to the present. We are just finishing vacation (we left the week after you left to go back to Ukraine) and will be going home soon. G4 starts his fall semester next week and we want to be settled before he has classes.
I got an email today on how to contact you through letters and phone calls. We will try to do so soon but I want to be able to communicate a little bit. I have been trying to start to learn Russian. I have not had good luck learning languages in the past - even after 4 years of Spanish, my communication is rudimentary at best. So I started researching different methods of teaching languages. There actually is a lot of research on the subject. I got way off track and ended up by getting into the area of ESL instruction, but I allowed myself to get distracted since this will be a subject of great interest to me when you finally get here Dema.
So I went off on the ESL tangent and found that there is some controversy surrounding ESL in public education. Unfortunately there is just one ESL track in schools and all children that are non-native speakers are lumped into it together. The problem is that there is a wide divergence in the home environment of these children. When children are living with an immigrant family, they are exposed to their native language at home and therefore need the conversational instruction at school. When you have children that are being exposed to solely English at home, they will excel in their conversational status, so much so that they will be indistinguishable from other children within a year or so, but their academic language will not be so lucky. Their ESL instruction will stop after conversational fluency has been reached, accounting for the major discrepancy that is seen in many cases of academic performance. The other phenomenon that occurs widely in adoptive families is that the acquisition of English will become replacement instead of additive on top of the kid's own language as they have no one reinforcing their native tongue at home.
So, back to my initial point here, that I want to learn Russian. After all this research, I am more convinced than ever it is necessary, not only to help ease the transition, but also to make sure that Dema's ability to speak his native tongue is preserved. (Now I know I am focusing on Russian and someone will say, "What about Ukranian?" and I get that - but since most people in Ukraine are already bilingual and speak both Russian and Ukraine, and since Russian is spoken in a few more places in the world and Russian books are more widely available, we will stick with that!) I am convinced that there is no greater gift in this global world than to be bilingual. But now remember my ability level here! I had already tried Rosetta Stone with Amanda when I tried to teach her Spanish, and she really didn't like it. I have also looked at purely grammatical texts and have finally come to realize that there is no magic way to learn - the conversational method vs. the grammatical method. They both have to be done in order to have true fluency, not just conversationally but also to be literate in a foreign language. Guess what - back to the computer for more research.
On our trip, with every college campus that we visited, I would look in their textbook section for their introductory Russian textbooks. Finally, I found the one I wanted, Golosa. It is a great textbook and workbook that also has internet links. It is a good blend of conversational and grammatical techniques, with a lot of listening. Of course, you can't jump right in, because they have a different alphabet! I feel so stupid - having to start with the alphabet again! The worst part of it is those letters of the Russian alphabet that look like some letters of our alphabet but have completely different sounds. For example an H is pronounced N. I think I have just about gotten the alphabet down, but pronunciation is a completely different thing. I am going to keep doing about a lesson a day when I can and hope that by the time you are ready for us, I can at least speak a little and understand you.
I have been proud of the little I have done so far. On our trip, we were walking around Pike Place Market in Seattle and came across a little Russian bakery. There was an article in their window that was written in Russian and I was able to sound out the title. Then I was able to translate a couple of the words! I was so proud of myself. So look out Dema - I am aiming for complete understanding when you get here - you won't be able to hide behind the language barrier!
Love,
Bethany, Amanda, G3, and G4
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