F is for 'Fish' and 'Fank you'

I'm the teacher in charge of the basic reading class this week, which is pretty much what it sounds like- the class for the kids advanced enough in English to begin to learn how to read and write in it. While this does mean that I get to work with the older (and, therefore, generally better behaved) kids for most of the class time this week, it also means that I have come up with ways to be entertaining while teaching them how to spell and sound out words- a task not as easy as it sounds when your students are still a far cry from even being fluent speakers of the language.

We tried reading a book. They were ten times more interested in looking at the pictures than the words (who can blame them for not being enchanted by the illustrations in Green Eggs and Ham?). We tried word flash cards with pictures. They got bored extremely quickly. We tried making letters with pipe-cleaners. They quickly became more interested in making other things out of the pipe-cleaners. We tried handing out stickers to the winners of word/letter races. The kids would just get distracted by the stickers they won. We tried lots of different things, but none of them seemed to work very well or kept the kids interested for more than about three minutes at a time. I guess learning how to read in a language you can't even speak fluently yet when you don't even know how to read/write in your first language just isn't very fun.

Teaching the reading class also scares me a little bit because I remember learning how to read and it wasn't easy... and English is my first language. I got confused about when to use what vowel and I'm pretty sure I realized that the When-two-vowels-go-walking rule was a load of B.S. about thirty seconds after one of my teachers taught it to me. Oh, and consanant blends- those were a whole world of chaos and confusion unto themselves individually. Will someone please explain to me why 'ph' and 'gh' both make the 'f' sound, because I still don't understand it? Why does 'tough' end with 'gh', and why does 'paragraph' end with 'ph', and why does 'loaf' actually end in 'f' and not in 'ph' or 'gh'? If it wasn't for my saintly mother who read with me everyday from the time I came out of the womb through about grade 7 and took the time each week to go over my spelling lists with me so that she could teach me spelling tricks, like how there are three smaller words in the word to-get-her and how 'pie' is in the type of 'pieces' (not peace) that you cut pie into, I would probably still be illiterate. I still have some troubles spelling and read only slightly faster in my head than I can aloud.

When I think of all the things that confused me when I was learning how to read and write in my first language, I feel a little bit overwhelmed and worried as to how in the world I'm going to be able to help young Russian kids make sense of reading and writing in their second language. Luckilly, I only teach Basic Reading one week out of every four.

The other day, while going through some of the letters and sounds, we came across the letter F. Here's a conversation I had with one of the kids about it:

ME: What letter is this?
ANTON: F
ME: What sound does it make?
ANTON: Fuh as in 'fish.'
ME: Good! F as in 'fish' and what else?
ANTON: 'Fank you'
ME: Uhhhm, not really. F is in 'fish', but not in 'TH-thank you.' We'll get to the sound at the beginning of 'th-thank you' another day.

Anton looked really confused for a second and I realized that it must be pretty hard for the kids to recognize the 'th' sound in English words because it doesn't exist in Russian, so saying it and hearing it is totally new to them. Now I know that I should sometimes emphasize it when speaking to any of the Russian kids or teaching teaching any of them new words with the 'th' sound.

While on the topic of struggling with learning new languages, the other day as we were coming out of the metro station on our way to the Institute conference, some lady stopped us just outside the doors. She tried talking to my head teacher in Russian but that didn't work, so the lady asked if she knew German. My head teacher at least was able to recognize that she was talking about speaking German, so she called me (who had just been looking around and not really been paying attention to the lady or conversation) over and said, "Hey, you know some German, right?" And before I knew what was going on, this little, old Russian woman started talking to me in German.

I was totally thrown off, seeing as speaking German to a Russian while on the streets of Moscow was not even on my list of things I expected to have happen that day. After a moment of some rough shifting into German-mode, I realized that the lady was asking me where we all were going. I told her we were going to church, and then she gave me some directions that I figured were probably to some Russian Orthodox cathedral and not to the church building where we were headed. After she finished giving me the directions, I smiled and tried saying thank you, but I couldn't find the words in the right language. First it popped up in my brain in Russian (which obviously would have worked, but I didn't want to end our German conversation in Russian), then it popped up in English, and then in Swedish (of all the languages!). After some frantic searching and deep digging through my brain, I finally gave up on finding the German form and just said thanks in Russian instead.

I am still quite shocked and disappointed that out of all the phrases I could forget while switching langauges, by brain failed to find 'Vielen Dank'. Talk about being lost in translation. At least I didn't try telling her "Fank you!"