that's not mine

its from j-list.com

"I can just see the patterns. It's like music."

I continue to watch my kids grow up, fascinated at how they go about acquiring

English and Japanese. My wife is helping my son study for the Step Test, level

2, a test that's usually taken by students in their third year of high school

(and for students who aren't putting a special effort into learning English,

not at all). Like most Japanese, my wife has learned English in a very

analytical way, memorizing the grammar as if it were a collection of complex

formulas. Verbs in English come in three varieties, present tense, past tense

and past participle, and Japanese have perfected the memorization of these

verbs into a science, spitting out "go, went, went" "eat, ate, eaten" "drive,

drove, driven" very easily. My wife naturally tries to impart this to my son,

but he refuses to learn English in this way -- he can usually "sense" the

correct answer on a test and doesn't need to make it more complex by trying to

understand the grammar like his mother does. When she asked him how he was

able to get the right answer without consciously knowing the rules of English,

he replied, "I can just see the patterns. It's like music." Kids sure are

amazing things.