School of Thought 

Refugee Week 2019

One of the aims of Refugee Week is to help people understand the many challenges refugees face coming to Australia.  For many of these people, learning a new language is a significant challenge. The following poem was shared with us,  by one of our LNPS parents who holds a position as a Multicultural Services Officer with the Australian Government Department of Human Services, and is an example of the challenges faced when learning English.  Many thanks to Helen Venizelou for sharing this treasured piece of writing, which provides the opportunity to notice and wonder about words.

As we unpack and inquire into spelling patterns and word usage daily, we are constantly reminded that people coming to Australia and our children of all ages do an amazing job of making sense of the complex English language.  You can see why there is not one way to teach English and that our inquiry based, integrated approach at LNPS is essential to create the building blocks for lifelong literacy learning.  Take the opportunity to share this poem with your child/ren and talk about the vocabulary, plurals, spelling patterns and share the joy of learning English.

“Why English is so hard (a poem)”

We’ll begin with a box, and the plural is boxes,

But the plural of ox should be oxen, not oxes.

Then one fowl is goose, but two are called geese,

Yet the plural of moose should never be meese.

You may find a lone mouse or a whole lot of mice,

But the plural of house is houses, not hice.

If the plural of man is always called men,

Why shouldn’t the plural of pan be called pen?

The cow in the plural may be cows or kine,

But the plural of vow is vows, not vine.

And I speak of a foot, and you show me your feet,

But I give you a boot — would a pair be called beet?

If one is a tooth and a whole set are teeth,

Why shouldn’t the plural of booth be called beeth?

Then one may be that, and three may be those,

Yet the plural of hat would never be hose.

We speak of a brother and also of brethren,

But though we say mother, we never say methren.

So our English, I think you will agree,

Is the trickiest language you ever did see.

(Author unknown)