Version 1
William: Oh dear. I did not do very well on the maths paper today.
Mother: Are you upset?
William: Of course I’m upset.
Mother: Are you disappointed?
William: I’m afraid that I won’t pass the eleven plus exam.
Mother: I suppose you feel that there is nothing that you can do about it?
William: You mean I need to do more papers?
Mother: More papers should help. Have you done your corrections?
William: I don’t know where I went wrong.
Mother: Well, look back over them and we can try them later on.
Version 2
William: Oh dear. I did not do very well on the maths paper today.
Mother: I’m sorry to hear that you did not do well on parts of the paper today.
William: Yes – it was the ones we went over last week. You know those hard ones.
Mother: Well there is something we can do about it then. Where can I help?
William: I don’t want to do another paper.
Mother: Quite right, you should not need to do another paper until we have those few areas sorted out together.
William: I don’t know where I went wrong.
Mother: Let try just one now and we can look at the others later on.
In first version the mother was describing be own concerns with the eleven plus. Should her son be doing more papers? What could he do if his marks were low? The mum is also helping her son to procrastinate.
The mother in version 2 is acknowledging her son’s problems but is working actively with her son to remedy the situation.
On the recent Easter holiday course one girl did remarkably well on a non verbal reasoning exercise – with around 92%. We all saluted her in an appropriate manner. The girl thanked us and then said: “My mum won’t be pleased and she will want to know why I didn’t get full marks.”
I am not sure who we should feel most sorry for – the girl or her mother!
No comments:
Post a Comment