Theme
Learning to Build the English Language the Same Way a Carpenter Learns to Build a House.
Children and adults alike are familiar with carpenters, and the parallel we see in how they learn to build a house and how we best learn to build the English language makes our study more interesting. Comparing our process of building English to the process a carpenter experiences, students (and teachers) can easily grasp the stages of learning they'll be experiencing in this study:
Carpenter
- As an Apprentice, he begins by learning each tool and studying the particular feature of each one.
- He then must learn the potential uses of each tool and practice its use. All the particulars of the first stage merge together so the Apprentice has in view the full range of potential uses.
- The final stage is learning to take all these tools and experience how they work together to do the work of building a house.
Student
- As an Apprentice, he begins by learning his tools, the sounds and formations of particular letters and letter teams.
- He then puts these letters together to build words, systematically learning why they are built the way they are - rules of English.
- The final stage is learning to put these words together to express a complete thought, namely, a sentence.
Students continue to experience these stages of learning as (1) the words they have built become tools for building sentences, (2) the grammar they learn provides the hows and whys for building sentences, and (3) in the final stage they learn to put these sentences together to compose paragraphs.
Throughout the study Barbara is the Master Contractor, daily teaching the students through the various skill levels and coordinating all the spelling, handwriting, reading, grammar, compositions and intro to Latin. The parent or teacher is the Foreman, overseeing the student Apprentice in oral and written work and drills, reviews, and discussions of presentations as needed. The Master Contractor provides a Plot Plan that everyone follows systematically. A carpenter's Plot Plan contains a series of Blueprints that insure he builds according to set Building Codes. For students of English, the Blueprints are the spelling list they compile where they build their words according to spelling rules called Building Codes.
Following the process of building a house, our students start by setting the foundations, adding framing to the foundations, adding design to the framing, and finally adding finishing elements to the design.
The student remains an Apprentice for the first two levels then becomes a Journeyman in the final two levels as he finishes his intermediate work and prepares for advanced work in The LATIN Road to English Grammar.
