Basketball Camp

Yuki's ESL teacher recommended against her taking Geometry over the summer, stating that her English level was just too low. I agree that her English is lacking, but I feel like she can manage math, especially since she'll have me helping her. I feel a bit guilty about it, but I told her mother that my opinion is that Yuki can take Geometry regardless. I don't know if Mrs. Kikugawa will decide to register Yuki despite the ESL teacher's concerns, but if she does, I hope I don't end up regretting my advice!

If she doesn't take Geometry, I suggested a basketball camp instead as a way to keep up the English practice over the summer, and Mrs. Kikugawa was enthusiastic about the idea because Yuki had already expressed interested in basketball camp. She missed the registration deadline for the camp offered through her middle school, but I assured Mrs. Kikugawa that there were other options, and I said I would do a bit of research on it.

I tried the YMCA first, but there were no summer basketball happenings. I got a bit worried that there might be nothing, but silly me - I live in Chapel Hill, for Pete's sake. A second, more general, Google search resulted in four possible camps. I'll print them off and talk to Mrs. Kikugawa and Yuki about them tomorrow.

I'm probably more interested than any other person would be because I remember enjoying basketball camp myself (in elementary or middle school?). I hope Yuki can also have some enjoyable experiences and, of course, get some excellent English practice.

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!

Slight Changes

Mrs. Kikugawa's English is much better than I thought. Either I misjudged her initially or she's progressed a lot recently. Or both! Anyway, this makes me very happy. She expressed a desire to start speaking English with me rather than Japanese. This means I'll lose my free Japanese practice, but I'm so happy to be helping her. When she doesn't understand something, she asks and we talk about it. She doesn't give me that glazed look and tune me out like the kids might do. That's the difference motivation makes, I suppose. The kids are learning English because they have to for school. But she wants to learn, so she's much more fun to teach.

Overall Good Day

Today was overall pleasant. I worked with Yosuke for one hour and then with his mother for the second hour. I don't usually tutor Mrs. Kikugawa, but when I went to her house today she asked if I would spend an hour with her because she was behind in her ESL class.

Yosuke was alright today, but I had this one really frustrating moment.

We were working on a geometry word problem and I couldn't get him to just concentrate on reading the problem to set it up properly. The problem involved a rectangle, and one of the dimensions was 9cm and the other you had to find by setting up a proportion with a similar rectangle that was 2cmx3cm.

Now, if you were careless, you might glance at the problem and say the 9cm is the long side of the rectangle, so the other side is 6cm. That's what Yosuke did, which I was expecting, so I asked him why he made the long side of the rectangle 9cm. He immediately changed his work so that the short side was 9cm. No, that wasn't good enough - I wanted him to read the problem and find for himself where it tells you which side is which. It was stated fairly clearly (the exact phrase was "9cm on the shorter side" and I know he can understand that). So I asked him this time why he made the shorter side 9cm. He pointed out that the problem asks at the bottom for the student to "find the length of the longer side." That's an okay response, but it's not good enough. It could just as easily as said "find the unknown side," so he needed to be able to figure it out without relying on that guess. He just kept repeating that answer, even though I told him to read the problem slowly and carefully. He just refused to read it! The word problem was only about 3 sentences long.

Finally, after pressing him for a suitable answer, he found the part where it said "on the shorter side" and I accepted it and we moved on. Please, Yosuke, next time when I ask you to read something carefully, just do it and get it over with!

Whew, sorry about the rant. I should add here that even though it was frustrating for me, I don't convey my frustration to the kid I'm working with. I'm actually very patient. But that doesn't stop me from ranting when it's all over!

Otherwise our session was not frustrating, and working with Mrs. Kikugawa was actually pretty fun.

Mrs. Kikugawa's ESL Struggles

I don't talk about it much, but often (once a week or so) after my usual tutoring sessions I'll talk to Yosuke's mother a bit about English and ESL. (Come to think of it, I mention her enough that she deserves her own nickname. I'll call her Mrs. Kikugawa.)

She's taking a free ESL class for adults at a church, and she usually has a question or two for me. I love how it works out - a bit of free tutoring for her, free (much needed) Japanese practice for me. I enjoy the discussions, too. We complain about the difficulty of learning a second language while simultaneously complimenting each other on her progress.

Mrs. Kikugawa doesn't speak much English - I'm not sure if it's lack of confidence or ability - but she appears to be pretty decent with grammar based on the work she's shown me. I really respect how hard she is working. She's a homemaker, so she doesn't really need to learn English because she can get by without it. In fact, she may be fighting a losing battle. She'll be back in Japan in three years. Is three years enough to learn English for an adult? Most of her time is spent at home, immersed in a Japanese-speaking environment. As far as I can tell, her only English practice comes from the ESL class.

I'll make a point of trying to help her more, and maybe see if I can get her to speak English with me so she can have a chance to practice. The only reason I haven't is that I imagine if I spend too much time helping her, she'll want to pay me for it, and I don't really want to earn a tutor's pay for being a conversation partner. Anybody could do that! I'd just like to continue helping her for free, especially considering that she provides me with the only Japanese practice I've ever gotten in the US.