This article will help emphasize The Thumb is a special thing in English, it's not just any finger like the ring finger 薬指 or pointer finger 人差し指 (people stabbing finger!?!?!笑) it #TheThumb not thrown in with the other Yubi指 fingers like the #親指 Parent Finger. Thanks to the Fediverse I can stress the uniqueness of the thumb with #TheOnion along with the Panda.

https://www.theonion.com/dolphins-evolve-opposable-thumbs-1819565718

/HT @flexghost
#BeginningEnglish #LearningAThe #EP #EnglishThroughPictures #IARichards #Japanese #Fingers

I made a worksheet page to drill "a" and "the" and a background reading page to stress a special view of the thumb. Page 10 of English Through Pictures(Richards and Gibson, 1945) is hard for veteran Japanese teachers. Maybe because "the thumb" is nothing special in their native language so it's not as much a help as it should be for learning "the" even after decades of experience.
https://bsmall2.codeberg.page/pages/opposable-thumb/EP1-p10-s4-hand-thumb.html
https://bsmall2.codeberg.page/pages/C3-a-hand-the-thumb/sentences.html
#EPGDM #EnglishThroughPictures #IaRichards

I teach English with the #GradedDirectMethod of #IARichards. He was developing a #PictorialNotation for leaning foreign languages with his #LanguageThroughPictures books starting with #EnglishThroughPictures in 1945. Learners can narrate sequences of their drawings with English sentences using 3 tenses of take, put, and give combined with off, on, to, in, and from. These basic constructs are widely useful. There must be an equivalent approach to learn programming.
https://www.gdm-japan.net/introduction/gdm-history/

A Start Page search fro the Japanese translation of a #MikeDavis interview on #TomDispatch turned up a writing I did about the #EnglishThroughPictures books. I wish I could find that org-file again, but I've been thinking of recreating the quote and source pointers with #racket 's #scribble for a while. But it was hard for me to focus on writing while using scribble. https://www.gdm-japan.net/uploads/yearbooks/yearbook_68.pdf
#GDM #IaRichards #LiberalEducation #FreedomLearning #humanities