Monday, October 5, 2009

Self-fulfilling Prophecy

You may recall that my children's language skills were tested last autumn and that my perfectly bilingual son was deemed in need of English as a Second Language input at his American school. 

As you know, Tom and his sister Anna were retested in April. Well, I've now received the results, and you'll be glad to know Tom is now considered to be not merely on a par with his peers but above-average in listening, reading, writing, speaking and comprehension, putting him in the top linguistic category: advanced proficiency.

This means that the ESL teacher who first assessed and then "serviced" him (her choice of words, not mine) can praise herself on a job splendidly done.

Eat your heart out, Henry Higgins. Ditto Joseph Heller, for that matter.

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