bazeb and confuseb

I have a young student who faithfully switches his "b's" and "d's" when writing. On his last spelling quiz, he got 7/10--and all his mistakes were because his b's and d's were reversed. What to do!

I've been very surprised to find that many students have problems with this. Since they already have to learn thousands of detailed characters, I assumed that symbol recognition would be no problem for them. Really, what's another 26? And in comparison to traditional Chinese, Roman letters look like bean sprouts dropped into soup! But I digress. I mentioned the problem to one of the Taiwanese assistants at school, and she said she'd come in to class and have a chat with the kids.

She drew a capital "B" and a lower case "b" on the board, and then launched into a mini-workshop on Bb/Dd. From what I could understand (it was in Chinese), she told them that a "B" looks like the profile of a pregnant woman, and "b" is her baby. Since the baby is inside, they both face the same direction. A "D" is the profile of a woman after she has the baby, and when the baby is out, it looks at the mommy: D d. Hmm. Maybe a bit of a stretch, but since then, the students seem to be writing the curvy consonants facing the correct directions.

Tonight I was biking home and noticed a sign near a taxi-car company that made me sigh despondently--and I realized I should surrender the hope that my students will one day be free from Bb/Dd confusion. There, in large letters, advertising the company's website, the sign read:

www.car-clud.com.tw