On Wed, 09 Jun 2010 15:15:54 -0500, Ignoramus967
wrote:

On 2010-06-09, Don Foreman wrote:
On Wed, 09 Jun 2010 14:24:42 -0500, Ignoramus967
wrote:

My 9 year old got his report card scores today. His percentile rank is
at 99% in math, but only 92% in English.

I think that he can do better than than on English. I got 90% on GMAT
verbal part, after just one year of living here, and he's lived in the
US for 9 years, out of which he spoke English for 6 years.

My question is how do we improve his English, given his age of 9. My
first thought is that he needs to just find something that he likes to
read about and read a lot more. I think that simply reading good books
(good as in, giving some examples of good use of the language) is
already a big help.

My second thought is maybe he just needs to find some fun club, group,
discussion forum, theater, tutor or something like that that would
somehow make him more interested in learning English. He has a math
tutor who tries to keep him interested in math, maybe we can find some
equivalent of that for English.

I never studied English formally, so I am not very experienced in such
matters.

i

Take hiim to a public library and introduce him to books. There is a
lot of good children's fiction. Enjoyable reading from good authors
will improve his English skills by osmosis, while being an enjoyable
activity. Summer is an excellent time to do this.

Don, we'll go to a library tomorrow. Good idea. The issue is trying to
be on time returning them, but at this age this can finally be a
useful exercise in learning responsibility.

Age 9 is certainly old enough for that. I was a regular patron of the
public library at that age, with no supervision. I had my own library
card. The library was about six blocks from our house, a very easy
walk.