Grace (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} celestialblendr) wrote,@ 2008-07-24 14:40:00 |
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Lost in Translation?
I've been tutoring English in varying capacities for the since last summer to a few different students, all of whom are Korean. My most recent student has been an eleven year old girl, whom I started working with in April, and who will be entering sixth grade this fall. She's been living in the US since she was four or five and speaks English with the fluency you'd expect of a native. Originally, I was a little unclear what they wanted me to work with her on, but it seems they want me to work on writing, which is a somewhat open-ended, vague designation. Also, they handed me a copy of the vocabulary workbook Wordly Wise, which I've used before. So, we've split our time between doing grammar work (she's the one I make all the madlibs for) and working on brief writing projects (most recently, we've been writing flower myths after reading the legends associated with the origins of the water lily and narcissus). She's far and away the easiest student to come up with projects for, and we seem to have a great rapport.
Today, I showed up for our regular session, and her mother answers the door and asks if I didn't get her phone messages from last night, canceling the sessions for this and next week, and saying maybe will pick up again two weeks from now. She didn't explain why the cancellation; they're not going on vacation. I have a sneaking suspicion this may be her way of saying we're done for good. If so, I'm a little perplexed, though her mother's English is much more rudimentary, so it's harder to discuss it much.
I'm really hoping that it's not related to some of the material I've brought. Last week, I brought two things which I really only questioned retroactively. One was a poem by teacher-activist-slam poet Taylor Mali, entitled "The The Impotence of Proofreading." (Here's a link to a video of Mali performing the poem, which really brings the most out of it) It's riddled with sometimes quite embarrassing word-choice errors that slip through spellcheck. The original version has a couple of dubiously school-appropriate words, but I changed those in the printout I gave her. The other was a drabble (hundred-word story), from which I'd conspicuously removed all of the capital letters and punctuation, so she should put it back in for practice. The short story was about two guys going to kill a vampire, and realizing they had the wrong house number (text here). It focuses more on what bunglers these guys are than on the task at hand. Now, I know she's reading the book Twilight (yes, Joe, this is your upcoming audience), which involves what I believe to be a rather sympathetic portrait of vampires, so it doesn't seem that her folks have a problem with the whole vampire thing.
Am I reading too much into this?
In any event, it leaves me with even more lurking in Amherst time, since I have another tutoring session this afternoon from 3:45-5, after which point I lurk until knitting at 7, because there's no point in my driving all the way back to Easthampton. But, hey, at least the scenery's good at Rao's today. Oh, abstract retail crushes that show up with a pair of wellies and a pool noodle.
I've been tutoring English in varying capacities for the since last summer to a few different students, all of whom are Korean. My most recent student has been an eleven year old girl, whom I started working with in April, and who will be entering sixth grade this fall. She's been living in the US since she was four or five and speaks English with the fluency you'd expect of a native. Originally, I was a little unclear what they wanted me to work with her on, but it seems they want me to work on writing, which is a somewhat open-ended, vague designation. Also, they handed me a copy of the vocabulary workbook Wordly Wise, which I've used before. So, we've split our time between doing grammar work (she's the one I make all the madlibs for) and working on brief writing projects (most recently, we've been writing flower myths after reading the legends associated with the origins of the water lily and narcissus). She's far and away the easiest student to come up with projects for, and we seem to have a great rapport.
Today, I showed up for our regular session, and her mother answers the door and asks if I didn't get her phone messages from last night, canceling the sessions for this and next week, and saying maybe will pick up again two weeks from now. She didn't explain why the cancellation; they're not going on vacation. I have a sneaking suspicion this may be her way of saying we're done for good. If so, I'm a little perplexed, though her mother's English is much more rudimentary, so it's harder to discuss it much.
I'm really hoping that it's not related to some of the material I've brought. Last week, I brought two things which I really only questioned retroactively. One was a poem by teacher-activist-slam poet Taylor Mali, entitled "The The Impotence of Proofreading." (Here's a link to a video of Mali performing the poem, which really brings the most out of it) It's riddled with sometimes quite embarrassing word-choice errors that slip through spellcheck. The original version has a couple of dubiously school-appropriate words, but I changed those in the printout I gave her. The other was a drabble (hundred-word story), from which I'd conspicuously removed all of the capital letters and punctuation, so she should put it back in for practice. The short story was about two guys going to kill a vampire, and realizing they had the wrong house number (text here). It focuses more on what bunglers these guys are than on the task at hand. Now, I know she's reading the book Twilight (yes, Joe, this is your upcoming audience), which involves what I believe to be a rather sympathetic portrait of vampires, so it doesn't seem that her folks have a problem with the whole vampire thing.
Am I reading too much into this?
In any event, it leaves me with even more lurking in Amherst time, since I have another tutoring session this afternoon from 3:45-5, after which point I lurk until knitting at 7, because there's no point in my driving all the way back to Easthampton. But, hey, at least the scenery's good at Rao's today. Oh, abstract retail crushes that show up with a pair of wellies and a pool noodle.
