Yesterday was the last day of classes. I have a student from China who has struggled all semester. My class (one below traditional first-year writing) was the first English class she took that wasn't tailored to non-native speakers. I think she has been a little impatient with me in the past, or impatient with herself, or maybe I have been impatient with her... in any case, I definitely felt like she needed and wanted more one-on-one during class time, but I couldn't give it to her.
Yesterday, we had extra time after I collected their final assignments, and she stuck around to talk. It was nice to be able to talk to each other more like human beings and less like teacher and student. Or maybe just more like teacher and student operating under less pressure and time constraints.
I handed back to her a couple of papers I had recently graded and went over the comments with her. I especially wanted to tell her that I appreciated the hard work she put in on her Argumentative paper, that I thought she made some great revisions, but that she still needed to work on sentence structure and clarity. I hoped that she might be able to work on this over the summer.
She was talking about how hard English is for her and how lucky native speakers are. I know she recently got a job in part due to her Chinese skills, so I reminded her that she is lucky to know Chinese too. In an attempt to encourage her and knowing that her husband is a native speaker, I told her that if she has kids, they will be lucky to be fluent in both English and Chinese. She said she doesn't want to have kids until she is in ENG 100 because she wants to be able to help her children with English.
I was surprised.
She also said that she doesn't want her kids to make fun of her for not speaking English well, like she has seen with other immigrant parents.
I told her that kids will always make fun of their parents, regardless of what language they speak. I told her how I make fun of my parents for not knowing how to use the computer.
I'm trying to be understanding, but I also find it very sad that she feels basically unfit to be a mother because of her English ability.
On a happier note, we continued talking about how she could improve her English.
"Do you read in English?" I asked.
She said it's too hard. She said her phone is even in Chinese, and she knows she should change it to English, but when she needs to get information quickly, it's just easier to have it in Chinese.
I told her that I definitely understood that reading in English would be tiring and discouraging.
I was trying to think of an image-heavy way she could practice reading English and thought about Pinterest, especially since this student is in many ways the Pinterest demographic. I think she's around 25 or 30 years old and I know that she enjoys gardening.
"Do you like to cook?" I asked. I showed her the site, how you could find recipes, gardening ideas, and crafts--and then click through to read more. She was excited to see fashion too. I hope Pinterest will be a good way for her to practice her English.
