Improve Your English! (Not Necessarily Your Spelling)

Thinking a lot about Grandpa Jenkins today. I heard from Jeremy this morning that he had a fall and broke a rib. I hope he recovers quickly. This is when it feels terrible to be so far away from home. He certainly has a lot of people that care about him nearby, and of course I’m sure Grandma is an amazing help to him. Love you guys!

I suppose it’s been a little while since I posted an entry. I have one English student so far, Mr. Cheng. In fact, he’s a professor at the big university in town and teaches chemistry. He has plans to study in California for a year starting in September 2007, so he’s highly motivated. I’m really looking forward to helping him. I also met with a woman, Anne, last night that wants me to help tutor her parents and her cousin’s sister. She is herself very fluent, but wants my help because they are reluctant to speak around her. They have a habit of confirming in Chinese whatever they say in English. She already has a program worked out and she has textbooks for them. She thinks I can help apply the things she’s teaching them, meeting three times a week in their home. We’ll have our first trial lesson in a couple of days. How exciting!

It’s funny because everyone I’ve talked to about the signs I put up, has commented that 100 RMB ($12.50) per hour is very expensive. But in addition to Mr. Cheng and Anne I’ve had several calls inquiring about my availability. I haven’t been flooded with calls, but I’m happy. The prospect of tutoring English really makes me think about language acquisition. I prepared a lesson plan for Mr. Cheng that includes a short article and dialog about the World Cup. His reading comprehension is very high, but we need to work on listening and speaking, so after some internet research here’s the plan:

1. We have an informal introduction to the topic: The World Cup.
2. I present some vocabulary that might be unfamiliar, especially proper nouns.
3. I explain that I’m going to read a short article for him slowly. He’s not allowed to read along with me or write anything down. He might not understand anything the first time — that’s ok, we’re going to read it several times together!
4. Then I’ll give him a copy of the article and ask him to read it aloud.
5. The third time, we go through each sentence for comprehension and pronunciation.
6. Then we read it together in unison — “duet.”
7. Finally, he reads it once more on his own.

I also prepared a short dialog to supplement the article. “Did you see the game last night? etc.” That way we can do some talking/reading in a more conversational tone. Afterward, I’m going to give him a CD of me reading all of the material, so he can practice on his own. We’ll see if this is a good method for him. I know I’m learning a lot about the World Cup!

I’m trying something similiar for learning Mandarin. I’m reading aloud as much as possible, regardless of whether I can understand it. I bought a collection of 365 bedtime stories for this purpose. Each story is only two pages long. I’ve been reading them with very low comprehension, but I can get bits and pieces. I think tonight is the three little pigs — but many of the stories are completely unfamiliary to me.

One of my teachers is trying to set me up with a language exchange partner. That would also be cool. We’d spend maybe the first hour talking Chinese and the second hour talking English. Of course, at this point there will have to be more English than Chinese, but every little bit of exposure will help me.

I watched the movie Dogville the other night on DVD. Man, it’s a mean little film. Has anyone else seen it? I was telling my sister that I’m not even sure why a person would bother making the film at all, since I think the under-lying theme is that we are all monsters as well as victims. Sometimes we are a victim of our situation, sometimes we are given the power to choose to be a monster, sometimes we are given the power to choose to be a victim, and sometimes we are given the power to be an even bigger monster. Are we to conclude then that we are UNable to choose NOT to be a victim without becoming a monster? Yikes! Or maybe it’s simply that the “gift” of power will inevitably destroy us. Anyway, it got me. If you have a less bleak take on it, I would love to hear someone else’s analysis.

Yes, yes. I’ll buy a camera soon.