English · Saturday September 29, 2007 by Lily
I finally plucked up the courage to look at R’s timed English coursework.
I cried. Yes, I know I’m feeling emotional post-op, we’ve turned some corners this month.
It is the first time in almost 34 years that I haven’t had a child under 16 to care for, and I’ve regained my life with this op. I hadn’t realised just how much my quality of life had deteriorated with this health problem.
I’ve done quite a lot of English with R one way and another but little of it has been the sort of English studied in school. We started HE with “Toe by Toe,” we have done handwriting, grammar, an on-line spelling programme, punctuation and various ways to make writing interesting to put it simply, also lately we started an IGCSE English course with Little Arthur School, but what we’ve never done is written an essay. We’ve written, many times, LOL, to the local borough council to complain about roads, paths etc, we’ve written short articles for Scout newsletters, we did some early primary literary critisism (not much) we’ve watched lots of outstanding hard to find films with Film Education. He has read bus and train magazines and newspapers but almost no books.
His writing was fresh, original, extremely sensitive and perceptive and well structured.
Not pushing him to write essays or stories hasn’t crushed his natural ability. To say I’m amazed at what he wrote is an understatement.
Our Dd came today with her little family. She’s a language graduate who is a talented writer and she was most impressed.
We’re very fortunate indeed to have found a sympathetic college with a nurturing approach that gives the follow-on R needs to HE.
