This summer I spent nearly a week in a house with two six-year-old twins and two five-year-old twins. It was probably my biggest dose of twee since I was just a little older than that age myself. All the kids really did pronounce a lot of their Rs and Ls like Ws.I heard that this habit had proved to be a problem in the past school year when one of the gang got excited about an American history book he'd read--in fact, the one shown here, written by Candice Ransom and published by Lerner.
He did a show-and-tell on one of its central figures:
the expwowuh Mewiwethuh Wewis.
Unaccountably, his classmates were unable to grasp what all the excitement was about. Of course, they were Engwish.
I had to go to a school speech therapist in 2nd grade for the r/w thing. I don't know whether she gave me the insight that allowed me to resolve the problem or if I would've outgrown it anyway. I do remember her describing the shape the tongue makes when pronouncing the r. I thought I sounded fine. Did anybody really misunderstand me? It was the first time I'd had pointed out to me the actual shapes one's mouth made in creating words. If nothing else, that was kinda neat.
ReplyDeleteI've never had a book of mine featured in a blog post that gave me such a case of the giggles. Thanks for the nod on Lewis and Clark!
ReplyDeletecandice ransom
In fact, Candice, your gift of an autographed Boxcar Children book for one of these sets of twins a coupla years ago set them off on enjoying a lot of that series. So thank you!
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