Thursday, February 23, 2012

learning to read

Not the kids, me!

My advice if you want to learn to read in Amharic is to first have a foundation of oral language. T and I worked with our tutors for about six months before attempting literacy. Once we had a bunch of words whose meanings we knew, we made flashcards with those words until we could read them. Then I bought a few bilingual children's books. I've been practicing the easiest of them, Trouble (Amharic title: Teklei) for a couple of weeks.

Here I am, doing my best to read in Amharic. My head is bobbing up and down because I'm focusing so hard.

7 comments:

  1. Very well done! You inspire me to return to my Amharic lessons, (ironically) abandoned eighteen months ago when we left to bring our daughter home.

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  2. All I can say is WOW, that is amazing. I admire you guys so much for tackling Amharic! Your kids will be impressed and appreciate their ferengi mommy and daddy for making such an effort! Bravo!

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  3. Our progress has actually been VERY slow. Don't be fooled - I had to practice this one page for half an hour.

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  4. This is so impressive and inspiring!

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  5. I went the concurrent route - reading, writing and vocabulary. After having to take some months off without study, I can now read all sorts of things but they mean next to nothing. Rats!

    Eirini

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