This morning I met with AR. His homework for last week was to discuss family and come in with some medical words he wanted help with. It was very interesting to hear about his family! Heart-wrenching stories woven through China’s political history: An uncle who fought for the Taiwanese side shoved out of his homeland by the Communist regime, a father who dreamed of being a doctor but whose dream was buried in the ground of the soil he worked as a peasant, and a brother who managed a Chinese restaurant in Tallahassee for years in order to survive in the US with detest for this job with never-ending labor. Yet, there are also stories of hope: re-uniting with his parents after 20 years of separation, his brother leaving the restaurant business to become a CPA, and AR working towards a new future in America.
He came with a McGraw-Hill Chinese-to-English Medical Diagnostic Textbook and a Casio Chinese-to-English Digital Dictionary that was quite helpful.
I had him read a section of the textbook without stopping. This was somewhat difficult because the text was challenging with words in it that even a native English speaker has a difficult time pronouncing and using properly. Another reason it was difficult is that AR has not even mastered pronouncing everyday English. So, I am somewhat stumped because he wants to work on these medical words, but he needs practice in pronunciation of everyday words. I’m going to have to give further thought as to how to bridge his passion with everyday practicality.
At the end of the session, I assigned him 10 words to work on that he had trouble with today and encouraged him to find ways to study these words that worked best for him. I shared with him a few ways that my classmates and I use to study vocabulary in our second language: color coding words, repetition, including the words in conversation, etc.
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