Back to Childhood

Almost everyday I study a portion of the course, then I log into in Italiano, hoping to practise my newly acquired knowledge. However, I am always overwhelmed staring at the rapid flow of the chat room, chipping in only a few simple phrases. I need to open three windows when I am in the chat room: translator, dictionary and an online software for verb conjugation. However, it wasn't difficult to persevere this way because chatting is appealing to the gregarious nature of human beings. Oh yesss, it's fun!

What is the value of doing this? Since mistakes are inevitable, I have to relearn humility. It is as if I were a child again, meekly accepting correction from my teachers. Especially when I have to be constantly reminded of my blunders with the masculine and feminine nouns.

I used to have scanty patience for children who seem to make the same mistakes forever. " But this is so EASY, how could you get it wrong again?" I would grumble this way. Then to my horror, I found myself repeating mistakes as I put into practice what I considered as " elementary Italian".

I began to reason to myself, " How could I make a fuss at those kids? After all they should be clumsy at their age, while a mature adult as I am, make also the same mistakes?"

Nowadays when a kid writes 'apple' instead of 'apples', I would just tell him, " Where did you hide the 's'? Please, return it to the poor apple." We laugh about it and I am more than willing to wait for him to gradually grow out of it.