See Dick Run

Good morning to all you wonderful Winter Texans who soon will be going back to your summer homes. We are going to miss you. Let me first of all thank you for setting such a good example for me to follow. Thanks to you who volunteer to tutor in our public schools, I decided to follow your example. 

I am tutoring English reading in a low-income school that has a Boys and Girls program. Giving this one hour of service every week has brought me a great deal of pleasure and a feeling that my small contribution may actually be making a difference. I am even considering adding another school or an extra hour in the school where I already volunteer. 

Most of these students have parents and grandparents who speak only Spanish so only Spanish is spoken at home. Actually, in my opinion these students are blessed to be bilingual. Speaking and understanding two languages and two cultures is of great benefit when you are surrounded by two different cultures. 

Since each student is allowed to choose the books they want to read, a few will look for books that are written in Spanish. At first, I believe they did that thinking that I would not understand if they skipped a few sentences. They soon learned that I could also speak and read Spanish. This led me to point out to them how easy it was to read Spanish compared to reading English where the vowels constantly sound different making it more difficult to pronounce English correctly.

You can learn the little jingle that teaches a person how to pronounce Spanish. The vowels are pronounced “ah, eh, eee, oh, uh.” That last vowel is pronounced like ‘UUH.’ Think “UUH this is good.” 

So, the little jingle that teaches an English speaker how to pronounce a word in Spanish is “ah, eh, eee, oh, uuh, el burro sabe mas que tu.” Now you can read Spanish. The last part of the little jingle says, “the donkey knows more than you.” 

Now you know why the kids call me the fun teacher because once I teach them the little jingle, I warn them not to go home and tell it to their big brother as they might have a fight on their hands.

There is just one problem with the little jingle when two vowels come together in a word they are pronounced differently. The two sounds slide into each other becoming one sound. The two vowels together are called a diphthong. So now you can read Spanish. Try it. But read it out loud.

If by any chance you have some books for first or second graders that are just gathering dust back home, why not bring them with you on your next trip down south. Where I tutor there are almost no books suitable for teaching reading to first, second or third graders. They really need books in English that are very basic with lots of repetition.

Do you remember? “See Dick. See Dick run. See Jane. See Jane run. See Dick and Jane run.”