Summer Summary

From the end of June to the end of August, about 10 weeks, I taught English to some Korean kids who came over for the summer specifically to learn English through a Tae Kwon Do program. With some exceptions where I've shared the teaching with a friend, such as for the week break for my family reunion, I taught for three hours a day Monday through Thursday, so four times a week. In addition to this job, I also had at least two tutoring jobs going on at a time. so it's been a summer of teaching. And I've learned a lot, I think.

For the first three weeks of teaching the Koreans, I think, I had only four students. Three of them were at the same level, twelve-year old kids who had an advanced beginner level. And the other was an eight-nine year old who was very, very beginner; she knew some words. In the middle of week three, I received three new students. They were mostly at the same level as the three advanced beginners. Then the week after they came, I got one more student, the day before I left on vacation actually. She was the same age as the other children, but her level seemed to be closer to the one very beginning student, though not quite as low.

Needless to say, the situation provided numerous challenges for me as well as for them. To begin with, filling three hours four times a week with English lessons is quite a bit, particularly since I don't speak a lick of Korean. Most schools usually try to switch the subject every hour or hour and a half. Well, in university, you might get some three hour seminars, but overall, for these children, three hours is pretty intense on a foreign language they're not very proficient in, and tough on a teacher to find things to do to fill that time.

By the second week, much thanks to my friend Marissa, I got down a bit of a routine, and so for the middle hour of every day from then on out, we spent reading, writing about the reading, and doing some listening comprehension. Of course that meant spending quite a bit of time in the library, trying to find not only books at their reading level, but books that weren't too babyish. If there's one thing I've learned this summer, it's that there is a definite need for early readers geared to learners of English as a foreign language. Twelve-year olds generally don't enjoy the same reading materials as first and second grade children do. Fortunately, there were a handful that fit the bill, and the children were otherwise compliant because they didn't have any other choice. I remain convicted, nonetheless, that reading is an excellent way to acquire a familiarity that paves the way to a better understanding of language in several facets.

Since two of the kids I tutored this summer were working on writing, I used books a lot to help them as well. As long as the books follow basic grammar rules (not all do, since many try to mimic colloquial speech), they're very helpful for early writers.

Even for the children for whom the subject matter was more appropriate (and even for them there was a degree of challenge as each child has different tastes), there also seems to be a need for standardization of reading levels. There are a number of books that have numbers on them to indicate the reading level--one to three, mostly. Only saw one level four. These numbers were sometimes helpful, but sometimes woefully misleading. Because publishers have no obligation to follow prescribed government educational standards, the numbers have relatively little meaning comparing across publishers. Although I don't have a teaching certificate, I imagine that even if publishers wanted to follow government standards, there would be problems since education is administered and governed on three different standard levels--federal, state, and school district. Aside from that, or maybe along with that, though I understand completely why it doesn't happen, it would also have helped a lot if the library had different sections for the different reader levels. Ah, oh well.

So, for the Korean, although the reading hour did have its challenges, I still felt like that was one of the easiest things about the day--it was set that that's what we would do for the second hour, which made planning easier. And I enjoyed looking for books and finding so many new things out there. Another good thing was that it enabled me to devote about a half an hour of the time per day in a one-on-one reading with the beginner, while everyone else read silently.

The program at Hollins didn't have any classes on early/easy readers. These kind of books are not generally very "literary" so I can understand to a certain degree. But I think there is room to include the kind of book in a children's literature program. They definitely contribute to the culture of children learning through books. Even the Korean kids had seen Frog and Toad before. That should tell you something.

Things got more complicated, though, when I came back from vacation and had basically two beginners. For a couple days after I got back, the new beginner (Mary--not her real name) sat with me and the young girl (Angela--not her real name), but Mary wasn't patient with Angela's reading and kept telling her what all the words were. Angela didn't mind. It didn't seem mean, but that really wasn't helping her. Since Mary was able to read by herself without help, I sent her back to her seat. But she wasn't very happy there. Although she could read, the writing assignments were very hard for her, and she had a terrible time understanding me during the rest of the time, so I felt like I wasn't very helpful to her at all. At least while the other newer arrivals were there, though, she was getting some help from them as I paired them off for study techniques.

But then, a week or so after I came back, the three students who had come in the third week left, leaving me with my four originals plus Mary. And well, by this time, my three more advanced originals were doing pretty well, and I wanted to build on the momentum they were gathering, but the beginners didn't seem to making a whole lot of progress. In some ways, even the easy things I introduced became daunting to them because they had come to assume that if I was teaching the other kids, it was too hard for them, which certainly wasn't true for everything. I did a whole week that was entirely vocabulary, for example--well, maybe a little grammar mixed in, but review more than introducing new grammar.

I ended up lessening my time with Angela in reading, though I started to help her write simple things about what she'd read. But this enabled me to be closer to Mary and the other kids, so while Angela would write a word or two, I could help Mary with her assignments. For the most part, I think Mary still felt frustrated, and I don't blame her at all. This all was only for a summer and a few hours a day, but it gave me a little taste of some of the frustrations both students and teachers must have felt, and I suppose in many places in the world still do--as they use one room school houses.

Nonetheless, in spite of all this, I had a lot of fun, both with the kids and with the putting lessons together and learning more about the grammar I thought I knew. A lot of the lessons I prepared, grammar that is, were based on things that I'd heard or seen in their writing that they were doing incorrectly. From this, I knew a teacher at some point must have introduced the concept to them and either the teacher or the student had missed some of the finer points. Nonetheless, since they'd established a basis, I knew I could build on it.

But it stretched my brain to think about why the things they were saying or writing were wrong. I've been correcting incorrect things for a long time, editing papers and such, and I've even been able to explain a lot of things to my peers to help them understand their mistakes. But since in most of those cases, my peers were native English speakers, there were a number of basic mistakes in the Korean's work I've never had to address. How, for example, do we use "many" "any" "much" "some" etc. And when do we use "was/were" plus "ing" rather than the simple past tense? In the beginning, they seemed to prefer using the was/were plus ing whenever I told them to use past tense, but 99% of the time, it wasn't right. After a couple weeks or so of that, I just told them not to use was/were plus ing at all so they could get the simple past down. And that in itself was important since even more than using the ing, they preferred to use the present tense. In fact, even up to the final spoke test I gave them on the last day of class, even though we've worked on past tense all summer, still when I asked them to verbalize a summary of a story we've read or listened to, or tell me about their trips or weekends, they related it in the present tense. They definitely learned things, though, and I definitely saw improvement, even in how they used past tense when they did use it. They used was and were less often--present or past tense. (They tended to put it after the subject just about all the time at first.) And their vocabulary increased. And, as their Tae Kwon Do master said, they increased in confidence.

That was actually an interesting conversation. Many times during the summer, every day for some stretches, I went to the studio before class to make copies and from time to time ran into the Tae Kwon Do master. He was always very gracious and grateful with me, which I appreciated, particularly since I felt somewhat self-conscious about my abilities, particularly with the students' different levels. But just before the last week, I ran into him and he told me they were doing very well and that he felt they would return to Korea with greater confidence. And that was the most important thing. He didn't say greater confidence in their abilities with English--just greater confidence. Coming from a Tae Kown Do master, that made sense that that would the ultimate aim, but I hadn't actually thought about it that way before.

The children obviously struggled. They didn't learn everything I tried teaching them. But they had matured. Is that what learning is about? Improving our confidence? I have to say that's a pretty good observation. Pretty wise, even. In all that we go about learning, even if we don't get things down 100%, we gain experience and maturity. In the end, well, speaking of languages specifically, God knows so many languages--and, well, he understands everyone, even if they don't have any language--learning one other language to our native tongue is hardly a chink in the wall toward thoroughly understanding everyone. But still, it's a chink, and we can start to see that God's helping us little by little, we can gain confidence and maturity and that's something. It really is.

Fresh French

While in Roanoke, I bought a lot of books. I can't help myself. I felt proud of myself for not going to the Green Valley book fair. That's an awful temptation. O didn't even buy any books after the author visits. But I still bought a good handful of other books at the faculty reading. I figured these people I knew and I was happy to get their signatures in the books, too. And then I also received a few gift books from a sweet teacher for my tutorial, in effort to help me with my Sleeping Beauty story by giving me some Medieval history books. Oh boy, history. Yes, I will have to read some history. I actually did read some library medieval history while I was in Roanoke, and it was pretty interesting. You should be proud of me.

But after receiving all these books, I came home thinking I was eager to read so many of them. I just couldn't decide.

Well, because I had taken so many of my own books with me down to Roanoke, and then with the acquisitions, I had a lot of reorganizing to do. I took just about all my books, even the ones that stayed, off the shelves to re-order and even changed the shelves for some topics. I did another project too to make room, but that's another story.

Anyway, in all of this self-enforced rummaging, I ran across this French book that I'd bought in Princeton like about a year and a half ago--le Petit Nicolas. And that was suddenly what I wanted to read. French. All of a sudden English didn't interest me at all. I felt this certain tiredness of English. All of these silly American stories, blah! They all seemed the same. Why couldn't English be like French?

Well, I just finished it tonight, and I have to say it was pretty sweet. Funny, clever, sometimes a little sad--as you'd expect from the culture. Sometimes it was a little predictable. I guess that kind of comes with all kinds of literature. But overall definitely enjoyable. I think I'm going to have to go get some more French books. Is that Green Valley Book Fair still going on?

Just kidding, I think I can read some English again, but I will be reading more French. It's just Fresh. What can I say?

English in America

For awhile, the past few years, I've been troubled by having to work with people whose abilities with the English language really suffered. I'm not talking just about the work-place, though I did have it there for awhile too since my former place of employment was the Foreign Service Institute in the School of Language Studies, working with teachers who had to be native speakers of the language they were teaching. Understandably, that was sometimes challenging, but I haven't been doing that for about a year now and haven't really had so much of an English problem in the work-place since. No, the greater problem has been working with poor English speakers in the "community"--on my personal business.

A few of those experiences include--
*the standard, trying to get tech support for my computer. I don't think my helper was living in the U.S. because his language was not standard U.S. English. That was extremely frustrating.

*trying to understand a pharmacy worker and have her understand me before signing any forms that involved my privacy rights.

*having a bus driver wiggle his head at me rather than speak to me because a person in a wheelchair was boarding the bus and he needed me to move. I hadn't seen the wheelchair and didn't understand what he was doing, so I looked at him quizzically, asked what the problem was, and he just continued to manually indicate to me that I needed to move. Finally another passenger let me know about the wheelchair.

The pharmacist was handled relatively easily--I never returned to that pharmacy. Though I'd already had the computer for a year and wasn't going to return it, I could at least take it to a local repair person. Thank goodness for competition. That's one thing of those great things about America.

But the bus incident was actually the scariest--to think the man driving the bus I was on didn't speak very good English. Could he understand his radio? Reports being given to him?

In some cases, it seems the English question is just a matter of a business's poor decisions about whom to hire for which positions. But the employment question actually takes another turn as well. I've applied for and studied job positions that I considered applying for and felt discriminated against because I didn't speak Spanish. This, for public service positions (in libraries) in the United States. Of course, the job descriptions couldn't say Spanish was required, just preferred. But as the number of people who don't speak English very well continues to increase, you can imagine how much that preference will influence the final hiring decision.

Recently, I learned of something that actually even minimized my hope of things even improving. That is, even if the borders are secured through hopeful legislation, there seems to be no promise that English-language capabilities will improve because, as I learned, the English-language tests for citizen applicants must be very weak.

A friend of mine reported after a day when she was in the jury pool that people had not only been allowed to be excluded but the judge forthrightly asked if their English language was good enough to understand the court proceedings. Why should the judge have any leeway to ask this question? If a person is born into US citizenship and grew up here, they would have gone through the education system and acquired sufficient English. If they became citizens by application, their English should have been tested to assure they could contribute to society including their natural duties as citizens--including jury duty. So apparently there's something wrong in one of these two areas.

Okay, so there is the other possibility that they be citizens born abroad and for whatever reason their citizen parent(s) didn't speak English with them, they didn't acquire it in school or whatever society, and then for whatever reason they just decided to move back to America without speaking a lick of English. Yes, I can see that there are some strong possibilities there.

Of course we know our education system has its problems, but it would seem that since a juror must be at least 18 years old, that at least by the very fact of living and growing up among English speakers the person would acquire sufficient English even if their teachers really stank. Children do tend to want to learn the language of the people around them. Are there really not enough English-speakers around to encourage these youth?

Without belaboring the point, it simply seems more likely the problem lies in the English testing of citizen applicants. So the question is why are the tests so lenient that a person doesn't need to communicate well enough to participate in his/her citizen's duties, such as performing jury duty? Is it because there are so many English speakers out there that we don't really need everyone to speak the only national language? Is it because this duty and honor is really only for natural born citizens? Or maybe jury duty isn't really that important. Our judicial system doesn't need any more lay citizens involved than it has to have already? It just seems to me that there is no good excuse at all for this.

We have enough trouble understanding each other even when we speak the same language that U.S. citizens shouldn't have to deal with additional language barriers when they're conducting personal business in their own country, trying to ensure their safety and rights. But most importantly, since the United States of America's only official language is English, her citizens need to speak this language with sufficient capability to perform all of their duties, which are in fact HONORS, as citizens.