Summer Project

The other day, I was thinking about my growing frustrations with Miki. On the one hand, she's become more open to being tutoring. While she's never been unfriendly, it was clear at the beginning that she resented my presence. Now she's much more laid-back, and she even enjoys herself occasionally. On the other hand, though, she continues to resist learning English. She won't speak English unless it's repeating or reading something. I know her English level is low, but she is able to make simple sentences. She just refuses to try.

I thought a possible solution to this would be to make her write a journal. I would have her write a little bit every day or perhaps every other day in English. I think I would use an online journal - perhaps Livejournal or Blogger - so I could check it and comment outside of our tutoring sessions. I would also have Yuki do this as well. Yuki doesn't refuse to speak English, but she's just so darn shy that she hardly speaks at all.

I haven't figured out the details (for example, will I give them prompts to respond to, or could they just write about whatever they like?), but I'm excited. It seems like an excellent way to finally get these two girls to use a lot of English.

My Best Friend?

This week, Yosuke has been working on writing journal entries for English class. Last night, we worked on one with the following prompt: "It is often said that dogs are man's best friend. Do you agree? If you could choose one animal to be your best friend and to talk to, what animal would you choose? Why?" (Can you believe this is a high school assignment?) Anyway, Yosuke wrote that he agreed because he had a dog back in Japan that was very important to him. He also chose this dog to be his best friend; his reason was that he would like to be able to talk to the dog to find out what she thinks of him, what she is doing back home in Japan right now, and what she would like to do. Very sweet, right?

After the tutoring session was over, I chatted with Yosuke's mother a bit about the dog. I asked her why she didn't bring the dog to the US with the family. Mrs. Kikugawa paused for a moment trying to find the right words and finally offered the explanation "She isn't polite." She explained that the dog is scared of humans and often bites. I mentioned my own dog that occasionally has problems with biting strangers, but Mrs. Kikugawa clarified that the dog bites both strangers and family members, and not with harmless nips like my dog, but often hard enough to draw blood. What a traumatized dog!

I commented that I was surprised that the dog bites even family members, and Mrs. Kikugawa said that the dog especially likes biting Yosuke! Apparently, Yosuke used to tease the dog when he was young. I couldn't help laughing! It makes me want to ask him about the journal entry. Does he like the dog even though she doesn't seem to like him at all? Or was it all just a convenient lie to get through a school assignment? Probably the latter!