My daughter knows approximately 20 words in English, and is due to start school in year three on Monday. She just finished the first year at her previous - Swedish - school, and struggled a bit there, and I am a bit worried about her skipping a year and learning a new language at the same time. But on the other hand, everybody are telling me she'll be fine, so I'm sure she will.
One area where she isn't struggling is gymnastics. We took her to a trial at the local gym club yesterday, and she somehow got through the class doing all the exercises. And getting told to go for a more advanced group without understanding more than one word of what the coach said. The magic word was "Stretch", and was used quite a bit. I asked her afterwards how she'd done it, and she said "Easy, I just looked at what the others tried to do, and did it right". Some confidence...
So today she tried the advanced group in the same club and again went through the class doing everything right. Apart from one thing, where I could see the coach trying to correct her. When I asked her afterwards what is was, she said that she cartwheeled different from how the coach wanted her to do it. "How did you know that? Did you understand what the coach said?", I asked her. "No, the words didn't mean anything, but she showed me what I did differently", she answered.
It is quite impressive how unimportant words are sometimes, and how much you can achieve without knowing any. But I still hope that she catches up soon. English, science and history are going to be hell otherwise...
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