Recently a young lady was a witness in the Trayvon Martin trial and from the articles I've read about it and the clips I've seen, her speech was so difficult that the court stenographer often had to have her repeat herself so she could get it accurate. She wasn't articulate at all. And there is some discussion as to if she helped or hurt the case of the prosecution. The comments surrounding this ranged from pity for her to utter disdain, disgust and of course there were some ridiculous racist comments. I am not going to go in on the trial - currently the whole thing is very frustrating and I'm hoping that some semblance of the truth comes out. (eventually I will post on it)
That said - I was raised in a family where my mother made it a point for us to speak properly. We read books. LOTS and lots of books. And I enjoyed reading so much that when I had read every book in the house, I once grabbed the dictionary and read a few pages until I got bored. That doesn't mean that I speak perfectly all the time. Which brings me to my question - What is the best way to correct a child's speech? The 11 year old uses the word "BE" so frequently! She says 'be' kind of like I used to say "Like" at the end of every sentence. Or the way some people say "UM" all the time. So I've stopped saying "like" all the time. I haven't eliminated it from my vocabulary but I don't say it frequently. But I can't remember how I got to this point. So any advice on this is SO welcome. I realize that in order for any change in her speech to happen her parents have to be on board and after talking to her step mom, they are, but they only spend the summers with her and this summer she'll be spending more time with me than with them so what can I do? Any suggestions? I know the importance of learning how to speak correctly. As she gets older she'll be expected to have conversations with adults and eventually interview for jobs - it's an important thing. At least I think so and her step mom thinks so. So I want to make sure I'm gently correcting her. I don't want her to feel that I'm nagging her. And I don't want her to clam up and stop speaking. So much to learn dealing with pre-teens...
Have a great week!
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