[synecdoche]

If passion, or own experience, is missing it may be a case of unknown unknowns for both parents and teachers.

The Matika site looks really nice but I have difficulties comprehending the instructions. Even the very first one for first grade. “Children step by record.” What does that mean? I tried the next one. “During addition we write addends below each other…” What? If all addends are below, no addend is on the top. It makes no sense. Then, “…and the sum below the line” with no line in sight. What, where, which line, how? That was frustrating.

[Viliam1234]

Wow, the English translation sucks much more than I noticed. :(

The whole "stepping" thing is a reference to how they (in the web page author's country) teach basic addition and subtraction at first grade. There is a carpet with numbers on the floor, you start at number zero, and do addition like "2+3" means "two steps forward, pause, three steps forward, now look at the number you are standing on". The carpet is situated so that from the sitting kids' position the zero is on the left, and the numbers increase to the right.

The idea is to turn integers into something "tangible", in a way that can later be extended to negative numbers.

So the instructions should be like: "You start at given number. Right arrow means a step forward to a greater number. Left arrow means a step backward to a smaller number. What number you end at?"

Sorry, I already know all these things by heart, so I didn't notice how the English instructions don't make sense. Guess I should contact the author about it.

[vonunov]

I feel the same way when I'm on hold and a recording tells me "your call will be answered in the order it was received". This isn't about grammatical pedantry -- I don't care that they didn't say in which -- it's about it not making sense. Which, as I said, isn't grammatical pedantry. But it probably is still a bit pedantic. Still, though, how can one thing have an order? What order was my call received in? Is it before or after itself? I get the sense that whoever recorded that didn't spend any time actually thinking about it, or they would have said "Calls are answered in the order [in which] they are received" or something.