The Lens:
This post is a bit of an intersection of my Misunderstandings and Lost in Translations posts.
When I was teaching 1st grade, I got pretty good at deciphering my students writing. At their level, spelling was de-emphasized when it came to writing. Have you thought about all that goes into writing?
First, you have to think about what you want to write. Then you have to think of the words you are going to use. Then, you have to physically put those words on paper keeping in mind where you are going with your writing. Add to that, proper punctuation and it is a lot for a little six year-old – and I haven’t even included spelling.
As you probably know, a child’s vocabulary far exceeds their ability to spell those words. Writing is a subject where the words are not geared toward words they can read. Often, many of the words they want to write, they don’t know how to spell.
I would always tell my students not to worry about spelling – use their phonetic sense. Most students did ok with that. Some, though, wanted to get their papers just right. They were a challenge. While I was happy they wanted to know how to spell words, it would always bog them down.
I was a teacher in a class of anywhere from 25 to 30+ students. Students would have to wait for me to come over to help them with spelling. If I was with another student, it might take a minute or so. During that time, students would just be sitting, getting frustrated and losing their rhythm in writing.
As I said, I got pretty good at reading my students phonetic spelling. Occasionally, though, I would have to ask for an interpretation. There was a memorable one that really stumped me.
A student had written about his dog Butte Hole. Had I not been so taken aback by the words, I might have been able to figure it out. Anyway, I called the child over and asked him to read me his paper. Apparently, his dog’s name was Buddy Holly. Makes perfect phonetic sense.
The Refraction:
As I said, this post is a bit of an intersection of my Misunderstandings and Lost in Translations posts. Misunderstandings is about misinterpretation through lack of clarification. Lost in Translation is a misinterpretation through the lack of understanding a dialect.
In this case, the misunderstanding came about because I just didn’t get it. Think about a piece of artwork that needs to be explained to you. To this kid, it was all very clear. To me, it wasn’t. If I wanted to understand it, I needed to ask.
It is really quite astonishing all of the ways in which we can misunderstand each other.
We communicate with each other constantly through oral or written words, in our body language, in our facial expressions. All of these means of communication are subject to interpretation. Give a thumbs up to someone of Arabic culture to signal all is good and see how that goes.
Communication is core to our existence and, yet, we are pretty bad at it. There are plenty of classes/seminars to improve communication that support the idea for the need for improvement.
I guess my point is communication is easy, being understood isn’t. We should at least be aware of that.